Robert Bergstrom

Robert C. Bergstrom, T5, 86th Infantry Division

Robert Bergstrom served in the Army in Germany during WWII

I am first in my generation of my family to go into the service. My brother went in two years after me. I met a cousin in basic training in California. We were together at Fort Benning for several weeks. He was shipped out as a replacement, and he was killed within a couple of weeks. I was one of the lucky ones. Maybe I should give you a little history. Like everyone here we started at Fort Sheridan.

Did you enlist?

No, I was drafted. I got my draft notice in the fall shortly after graduation from high school. I decided that I wanted to start college. I started at Northwestern a week after I graduated from high school. I got a summer quarter in and then when the fall quarter came up I asked for a deferment so I was deferred until the end of the year. I was inducted in December and didn’t actually go in until January of 1944 along with a lot of other people. I was drafted into the army. I went down to the draft center with some high school buddies. All the rest of them were sent to the Navy, and I was one of group sent to the Army. Most of them ended up at Great Lakes and never went anywhere. I ended up in the Army and went everywhere, literally. They talked us into the ASTP program, Army Specialized Training Program which allowed you, once you were chosen, to go through basic training program and then you went to college to become an engineering student and eventually come out as an officer, as a second lieutenant. I started in a training group down in Fort Benning and about midway through they cancelled the whole program. Everybody there was sent into the infantry. The infantry got a lot of Navy boys, not Navy boys but fly boys. They cancelled the air program as well. We ended up with a lot of frustrated college students and air core men. We got ribbing from the old time army sergeants telling us that we were a bunch of college kids and you don’t know anything. We had kind of a rough go to start with. As I said I was lucky. I was sent to a full-fledged Army division that was here in the states and continued to train. They sent a few cadres off to replacement, and I got into a headquarters company and they didn’t touch us. It just kept us intact, and we started training. We had maneuvers in Louisiana. That was interesting with the snacks and spiders and centipedes and all that sort of thing. After we finished our basic training and our maneuvering, we were sent to California for amphibious training. I was in three different camps in California, Camp Callan which is right outside of San Diego, and it’s now part of Torrey Pines. There is a golf outfit right now going on in Torrey Pines. The only sign left of that is a road sign that says Callan Road. It was called Camp Callan. I liked that one because I had relatives in San Diego with two daughters and a son and they took me to the zoo and it was great. Then they moved us to Camp Cooke up in Northern California, and about that time I got a furlough home, so I went all the way back to Chicago. By the time I came back, they were a different camp called San Luis Obispo, even farther north.

I should go back. While we were in San Diego, we had a cruise, a training cruise. Not quite like the cruises you have today, but we started out on the docks loading and unloading. I was in a tank platoon which had a 57 millimeter gun hauled by a truck. For the amphibious training we would use a crane to haul the gun up onto the ship and then you get out there for the landing and haul it back down on the landing craft and then land on the beach. It was about a six-day cruise because they wanted us to go to Okinawa. We were scheduled for the invasion of Okinawa. Along about this time was the Battle of the Bulge. General George Marshall was in charge of the whole army back here in the States, and he decreed that we are not taking any chances with the Germans pushing everybody back into the channel. Everybody that can move gets over to Europe, and so the whole division was sent to Europe. I had a six or seven day train trip all the way across the US. I had done one round trip before for furlough and this was the second one. Anyway, we were sent out of Boston Harbor and ended up in Le Havre, which is on the [English] Channel. We ended up in a tent camp. These were cigarette camps. Ours was named Camp Old Gold. I remember the name.

That’s what they were named?

They were named after cigarettes. I think there was a Camp Lucky Strike, but I don’t remember any of the others, but ours was Old Gold. I think they were eight men [pyramidal] tents. It was cold in France. This was February, and it was cold. There was ice on the river. We had little space heaters in the tents, and we had a few fires because you couldn’t get them too close to the tenting material. I don’t know if this was rumor or not, but supposedly a couple of the fellows went out and cut down a telephone pole and chopped it up to keep warm. Of course, the locals didn’t care for that. The French in this Normandy area took a pretty good beating with the landing, and they didn’t like Americans too well. So, the rumor was they slipped into some of the tents and knifed some of the GIs. I happened to be in a tent with my squad leader. He was a wonderful man, and he was like a father. He watched over us and all, and we just lost him about a year and half ago. Anyway, he believed there may be something to this rumor. We had mummy bags that we slept in, and one of the nights I got turned around in the mummy bag and I couldn’t find the opening. I guess I started hollering, and he came over. He was afraid that one of the Frenchmen had got in and had taken care of me. Anyway, I was safe.

When we left there, they sent my squad to Germany in a French Forty and Eight box car. [picture] It’s half the size of an American box car, but supposedly big enough to hold 40 men. Believe me, there’s not enough space for all 40 men. So you would have someone’s arm across your neck or foot in your stomach. We were in that box car for two full days. They threw in a couple of bales of hay, a couple of GI cans of water and a can of sea rations and closed the door and off you go. It was an interesting experience I tell you. So if you ever hear of a Forty and Eight, it was for forty men or eight horses. Forty men take up the space of eight horses.

This was our cruise ship [picture]. This was an attack transport during the war. In fact it was involved in the Gaudalcanal landing. It made several missions down there to resupply the troops on Guadalcanal. Later on, when the landing became more sophisticated, we had carriers and all that so they turned the transports into training ships so we had our amphibious maneuvers to San Clemente Island which is off San Diego. We landed on Pendleton actually. I’ve been on Camp Pendleton in the army which is rather unusual. We landed at night, and we were there the next day. It was bitterly cold with the wind coming off the Pacific with the dampness and all. It was really, really uncomfortable.

When did you put all this together?

I started this quite a few years ago. I bring it down to school when I go.

So what year was it when you went to France?

That would have been 1945.

How old were you?

I was 18. This…is a good time to mention San Luis Obispo. I belonged to the Army Blackhawk Association for the 86th Division, and we have been meeting for years and years. Our 25th reunion was back at San Luis Obispo.

So you were able to go to all the reunions?

Yes, but that was the last one because we were getting too infirm, and it was getting too difficult to get together so this was the last one. Our last president was a sculptor. He was a very gifted sculptor, and he sculpted this picture of one of our 86th. It was no particular person, but anyway this monument was set up in Camp San Luis Obispo which is still operating as a National Guard post. We were greeted by a woman Coronel who was in charge of the post. She was a very, very nice young lady. One of the girls took us in a golf cart around the post.

How many of you were there?

We had about 120. A lot of family had been coming to fill out the group. One of the officers died. He literally got on the bus and collapsed and died the next day. So, it was time to quit unfortunately. All my buddies except one have died within the last couple of years. He has Alzheimer’s so badly but when I talk to his wife she says that he is doing fine. It’s just that time in life.

Were you able to stay together with the same kids that you went in with? You had talked about that you were all together.

Once I got into the 86th Division in Louisiana, but the ones I started with at Fort Benning. As I said my cousin went overseas. The valedictorian of our high school class had a scholarship to MIT, brilliant guy. The same thing happened to him, and he ended up as a replacement. You don’t want to be a replacement in the army because you are new and haven’t learned the ropes. You end up being more at risk. Anyway I got into the division right from the beginning. I’ve lost some of them too that I knew from there.

After we got off the Forty and Eight, we went through, parts of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and the cities of Aachen and Duren [Germany]. Both of the cities in the downtown area where the trains went through were completely leveled. This was my first sight of the destruction in Europe. We were put in trucks, and I still remember seeing one GI body on the side of the road. In other words, we were right at the front because the graves men hadn’t come in yet. We went through the center of Cologne, and I have no visual memories of it. Obviously I should have been able to see the cathedral, but I don’t. I was part of a five truck convoy, and we went on the road on the west bank of the river, the Rhine River. This was less than a week after the collapse of the Ludendorff Bridge. The GIs came up to it, and it was still intact. There had been some charges on part of it so there was some damage, but they decided to go across. They caught the German on the other side that was about to detonate another charge. We got a whole bunch of men and material across the Rhine River before the bridge collapsed. By the time I got there, it had collapsed, and they had put up a Bailey bridge [a portable, prefabricated bridge]. We crossed the Rhine on a Bailey bridge, then turned south and continued on the east bank of the Rhine only to find out we didn’t belong there. We were cut off between convoys and ended up hearing small arms fire, and we were a very short distance from Patton’s army. We made a crossing south of there, so we turned around and crossed the river and met our group that was billeted along the Rhine. My particular squad, which was a 57 millimeter gun squad, was billeted in a German dye factory along the Rhine. The first night we bunked in the factory, and they had huge vats in the ceiling of ammonia, which is related to the manufacture of dye. It was overwhelming so the next day we decided to find a basement room and made some crude bunks out of some material we found. We spent the rest of the time in there. Our mission was to open the gates in the yard of this factory and roll a gun out every night. If we see any German traffic on the Rhine, we were to shoot it. Well, we didn’t see any, but we did get fire. We got mortar shells and 88s during the night, but no immediate casualties in my group. The division did send at least one party across the river by small boat to maneuver and get prisoners and find out was going on. We were eventually relieved by the 82nd Airborne. We went back down and re-crossed the Rhine, and then we proceeded up toward the Ruhr area.

I happened to be in the three forty first infantry, and we were at the head of this column going into Hagen. It was a nice, bright sunny day and on the cold side. We pull into this narrow valley with hills on either side which is not a good thing to do. One of the things that we were indoctrinated in our training was that you don’t bunch up. Well guess what, we bunched up with one truck right behind the other. I think it was about 1:00 p.m. when all of a sudden five or six 88 shells came over and killed two ammo men and one anti-tank man was wounded. My response was immediate. I jumped off the truck, and ended up next to a railroad embankment. I looked around and the trucks were gone. (Laughs) I was missing in action. Anyway, I went back to the road, and there was a house just a little ways away. I went in, and the rest of my unit, the company, was in the basement. I stayed there until my truck with the men came back, and I got back on the truck. I don’t think I was ever officially missing in action, but I was literally, but anyway that was my baptism of fire. I think it was about 95% of the unit was given the Combat Infantry Badge, which is the one with the silver rifle with the blue background. It’s still being given today. Our goddaughter’s son who was in Iraq said he got the CIB (Combat Infantry Badge) and he got that because he was in combat in Iraq. That was looked upon as something special. Immediately, of course, you get combat pay. It was about $10.00 a month so it was inconsequential. Anyway, we pulled our group together and that night I dug my first foxhole. We had dug foxholes in training, but that was my first foxhole in combat. We were at a road junction, and I remember one of the other men dug his foxhole and proceeded to take off his boots. He may have taken off his shirt and pants too as far as I know and settle in for the night in the foxhole. He just didn’t act like he was ready to get too concerned about it. To go back, when we were still in Camp Old Gold, he got a visit from his father who was a full Colonel in Eisenhower’s—you couldn’t call it a cabinet—but anyway the group. He was going to try to get his son back in there, but even he couldn’t do it that fast before we were shipped out into combat… He was a real old time officer. His son was kind of a goof off, and he made it through and he wasn’t killed or anything. This is a picture of a couple of German prisoners. [picture]. The division is roughly 15,000 men and the regiment is perhaps a couple thousand per regiment. There are normally three regiments in a division. Anyway, the next day was bright and sunny, and for some strange reason, they told us to take our gun… We put the pack together, put down a third wheel, and we were pushing it down the middle of the street in Hagen. The line companies, K particularly, because I started out in Company K, were on one side and Company L was on the other. We were in the middle of the street, and they were shooting at us.

So was this all after the Battle of the Bulge?

This was toward the end of the Battle of the Bulge. No, I’m sorry this was after the Battle of the Bulge. Anyway, we got through that, pushing this gun down the middle of the street. Within another 12 hours or so the enemy gave up and the pocket was cut in two and we just mopped up the site. This was the industrial area of Germany where all the steel mills and everything was located. It was an important thing to eliminate.

Where would it be on this map?

It’s probably far north. It’s across the river roughly from Cologne, maybe a little farther north. These maps are all from my father. He was a Daily News reader back then. So I think he cut them out of the Daily News. They kept track of where the divisions were so our name came up. For the rest of the war, or a good share of it, we were attached to Patton’s army down through Bavaria. On my first night trip, we encountered Bed Check Charley. That was kind of a mythical thing. A plane comes through the convoys and strafes the convoy. The convoy halts and everyone jumps out of the truck and runs to either side. I don’t know that we had any casualties from that, but anyway it was a little scary. The rest of the trip down through Bavaria consisted of being held up at a river crossing, and they would throw some shells to us and then the next day, in many cases, we would pull out and we would cross the river. The one night in particular, and I think it is written down here, we were under pretty heavy mortar fire, and 88 fire. We were supposed to dig trenches, fox holes. It was limestone so after we got down about this far, it was solid rock. You had to dig what they call a slip trench, where you could get just barely below the surface and you could just lay down prostrate completely. That was my third experience hunting some kind of protection. We were the first division to cross the Danube. I can still remember the night before. We were under tremendous artillery fire from the Germans, and I slept soundly. I tell my wife that I can sleep through anything (laughs). We were in a German house. We had moved the Germans to the basement, and we occupied the first floor. We occupied a lot of German houses. That was the thing to do. Sometimes the family was gone, and something they were moved into another room or the basement. One other notable thing we did was we liberated a labor camp. I rode combat even though I was in the infantry. We had a truck pulling the tank, and we rode on the back of the truck so I didn’t hike in the army. We did hikes in training, but not while I was in the army. Anyway, we had picked up a full case of eggs so we handed them to these guys. I don’t what they did with them. Maybe they cracked them, and ate them raw. I can still remember one of the men coming out and kissing our hands because they were so thankful. We had to have been very close to Dachau, but I don’t remember our outfit seeing that. I think that was another group on the other side. The picture I have is of Patton’s army of self-propelled, largely I think, 155 millimeter guns and they used the old British method of fighting. You have one line fighting and the next line moves up through them and then they start firing. He was doing it with self-propelled, gigantic guns. The impression was that nothing was going to stand in the way. It literally just carpets the ground, and then they keep moving. We ran out of gas quite often. We had to wait for the gas supplies to catch up to us. At times we would be stalled, and then we would have to fill the tanks and off we would go again. We ended up in Austria, within sight of the Alps. I can still remember an Austrian chalet. That may well have been the one we were billeted in. Some of the men got down to Berchtesgaden. I didn’t get any leave there. I did a lot of guard duty down there. The officers were not held in real high esteem when you’re in service. You didn’t fraternize with the officers. Even though now with the veterans group that you become friendly with some of the officers. Some more than others, but anyway they had found a couple of steaks that they were going to have for their supper. At least two of our guys found them and ate them. So, our whole platoon was deemed that we would do all the guard duty from then on. We did a lot of guard duty.

Just to pay for those steaks?

Just to pay for those two steaks and we didn’t even get a taste of them. Another interesting impression was, maybe I shouldn’t even tell you this, but we kept thousands of prisoners. By this time we had captured a lot of older men and literally boys. They were drafted into the German army for the last hold off. By that time, they were ready to give up. We were in a German farmhouse that had two buildings on either side and a walkway through the middle where you would pull the tractors in. We got these prisoners up in the loft on either side, and there were four of us pulling guard duty. We got tired doing all this guard duty. We put our blankets down and we decided we would be on guard for one hour and off for three. When you were ready you would wake the other guy up. When we woke up in the morning, we were all asleep!

Were the prisoners still there?

They were still there. We could have been shot for doing that. You don’t fall asleep on guard duty. You are sworn to secrecy. I don’t think I have ever told anybody that story.

How many prisoners did you have to guard?

I don’t remember. There were probably a couple of dozen maybe. Of course, we were sent back to a, more or less, permanent place. There is a picture of Lampertheim, and it was completely untouched. There was no bomb damage or anything. We were there for at least two weeks I think. It was right outside of Mannheim on the Rhine. I went skinny dipping once in the Rhine so I could say that I went swimming in the Rhine. It was right across the river from Heidelberg, which is a castle. I did get in on that tour. I toured the castle. Heidelberg is a university town. A big university with dorms and I guess fraternities and all that. It was a kind of interesting, quaint, German town. For that, I finally got an occupation medal. That counted as occupation duty. Of course, from there, we went back to Old Gold. From there we got on one of these ships (looking at a picture). This is not the one that took my group, but there were three ships with one regiment on each of the ships plus the auxiliary things. We had a pretty good welcome.

So how long did this whole tour take?

We were in combat for 34 days, actual combat with contact with the enemy. It was spasmodic of course. We had losses and all. We moved through there. The rumor was that we knew that eventually we were going to go to the Pacific. Rumor was that they were going to send us down to Marseille through the Suez Canal and around, which meant we would have circumvented the globe. It sounded very appealing, but of course we got home and saw our families and all. That would have been something to be able to say. Instead I got a second boat trip all the way across the Pacific so I crossed both the oceans as part of my army training.

We came back to the States to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, and then they sent us to camps nearest our homes. My group was sent to Camp Grant, which is just south of Rockford. Camp Grant has a special attachment to the 86th Division. I haven’t found it written down anywhere, but I think our division was named after Chief Black Hawk, who was a renegade Indian in the Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa area…

Camp Grant was just south of Rockford and the Battle of Bad Ax or one of those battles was fought very near to Camp Grant. I think this is why they named our division, and I think we have one of the most colorful insignias of any of them. Some of them are just a number or some other thing. I’m pretty proud of being a Black Hawk. Anyway, we were shipped to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma from Camp Grant. Camp Gruber is in eastern Oklahoma for retraining. I have pictures here of that.

Wow, these [pictures] are so neat. What year are we in now?

This was 1945. The Japs hadn’t surrendered yet while I was in Camp Gruber. They hadn’t dropped the atomic bomb. That happened while we were on a train on the way to California. By the time we got to California, the Japs had surrendered. Pardon me, the Japanese had surrendered. They sent us to the Philippine Islands. This is where we ended up in Batangas, which is a port city on the south coast of Luzon, and we were in a tent camp there for two weeks. Then they moved us about 35 miles inland to a coconut plantation, so I spent six months in a coconut plantation.

Was there any combat going on down there?

No, there were Japanese in the jungles. In fact, I just read not too long ago that some Japanese soldier finally gave up. There are jungles all over the place where they can hide. There were some risks maybe from some of them, but the reason for us being there. There was one battalion which was three or four companies plus the headquarters company. There’s a headquarters company for each of the three battalions. They stopped us there and the rest of the whole division went up to Manila to Marikina Airfield, which is outside of Manila. It’s the hottest place and a tropical climate. We were in the hills.

So, you were on vacation.

Almost like that, yes. My sergeant was a skillful carpenter. Every one of the companies that was there built a company club. He, with a lot of help, built this one for us, the Harem. Here’s the inside. They had parachute silk they got a hold of from somewhere, and so the ceiling was there. Of course, the Filipinos with a machete can do fantastic things. They’ll build furniture and all kinds of things with that machete. Here’s a picture of it under construction. [picture] This is the completed bar, and they got a hold of what they needed. You have to supply a bar. This fellow is gone. I can’t answer for these. The last time I heard this one was an architect retired in Florida, so I have no idea where he is now. We were also near the railroad station for the little town of Lipa. It was a terrible filthy place outside of town, and we cleaned up the station. We set up GI tech and we had classes and a library courtesy of the USO I imagine. We set up a dark room, and I had started in high school in the camera club and I had my own dark room when I grew up in our basement. This was my thing. We have never been able to find this man. He came from Cincinnati and we looked him up, but we never did find him. Anyway, we had an I&E officer. He found a speed graphic camera and a source of all the film we could shoot. This man took this speed graphic camera and attached it and made an enlarger out of it. We didn’t charge any of the guys, but we set up a business developing film for everybody in the group and printing pictures and making enlargements. So, a lot of the pictures I have are because of this. I wanted one of these when I came back from service. To me, that was “the camera” to have. Anyway, I was teaching one of the classes there. I tried teaching a class in photography, and I took some classes under the army program where you could take classes. We also had a building that we converted into a chapel. Here it is. One of my best buddies was the Chaplain’s assistant. He and I were very good friends, and I became pretty good friends with both of the Chaplains. Chaplain [Terrell] Baxter, I think was a New Zealander. Somehow or other he ended up with us in combat in Europe. One of the things that I remember is I like to sing. I usually sang in the choirs when we were in camp. I did a lot of singing. Anyway, he arranged a memorial service in one of the Bavarian Cathedrals, and I had my favorite song book with me in my duffel bag, and I picked out a song. We needed air for the organ. This was the sort of thing where you could have one of these riding pumps that with a series of steps you could step on it and ride it down and move the ballast. Then you would ride the other one down. Have you seen anything like that? Anyway, that’s what it was and I sang with an accompaniment in this Bavarian church. I wish I had pictures of that. I think we had a couple of little German boys who rode the pumps for a package of chewing gum which was sufficient. That was an interesting experience to go through. Anyway, I didn’t do much of the work on the chapel. My assistant friend did a lot of work on the chapel whitewashing it.

This chapel was just on the base for you guys? It wasn’t for the people who lived around there.

No, but I suppose if somebody wanted to come in they wouldn’t stop them. It was just for our group.

Do you think it is still there?

The building may well be there. I don’t know. We actually built a USO building, and they had a band. This is a picture of my friend from Danville with his sax. He was a sax player. Anyway, the USO found instruments and so they had a little dance band. Occasionally, one of the USO girls would be there and we could actually dance with a member of the opposite sex. This is Roy Hansen. He was a ham operator when he came in the service. He scrounged around and got all this radio equipment. He was talking to South America and Southeast Asia. I was fascinated by it and by that time I was in the headquarters tent next to the radio tent. I spent a lot of time being fascinated by his talking to people all over. I had my last MO [military occupation] as mail clerk. I had to sort the mail and deliver it. I found out very soon that the Colonel gets private mail delivery to his desk. The army is a learning experience. (looking at a patch). This is when I got my E-5. That’s a strange patch. I think it’s the equivalent to a lance corporal. There are an awful lot of them, like there are an awful lot of lance corporals in the marines. It’s not really a corporal; it’s kind of in between. This is one of the pesos, and it’s in good shape. We were next to an atrocity site, and I don’t know if you are up to seeing this.

Sure.

These are former residents of the town of Lipa. They were ostensibly brought out of town on a side of a cliff overlooking the river to get ration cards. They divided them into smaller and smaller groups, then down to one or two, then over the edge. When the Americans came there, everything was out in the open so they bulldozed the side of the hill, but the tropical rains washed a lot of it away. The skulls ended up on the bottom. Even when we got there, we started out at the top and walked down a path and there were limb bones sticking out the side of the hill. This is a first-hand note from someone who was there and viewed this. They claimed that the river ran red for several days because of the blood that was involved. They were not a friendly group. I’ve spoken to people that were in our camps which was not really good treatment. I spoke to the brother of the mayor of the town of Lipa right here in Park Ridge in fact. It is strange how connections can come about. (looking at pictures) This is the town of Lipa. I don’t think this is war damage. I don’t think this is war damage, I think this is just poor. They had a cathedral of course. This is a view from the town square from the cathedral. I don’t think I took these pictures. One of the other men borrowed the camera at times and went off, but these are mine.

All I can say about being in the Army is that I got to do a lot of traveling. The combat was tough and scary and I came mighty close a couple of times, but I would not give anything for not having done it. I did a lot of train travel that I have always enjoyed. I crisscrossed the country about six or seven times. That’s in the days before they flew every serviceman wherever they wanted to go.

Interviewed 2/1/12