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April 5, 1945
EDITOR’S NOTE—This letter was written by Pvt. Jack Samelson to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lester Samelson of Hartington. He is a member of a motorized cavalry unit with the Ninth Army in Germany.
“You mentioned you’d like to know where and how far into Germany I am. That’s the kind of stuff that can’t be told. I can tell of things that happened 30 days ago but by then I’ve usually forgotten them. I can tell you I’m in the Ninth Army— you’ve been guessing for so long and usually wrong. When I first got here we were in the First Army and then were switched to the Ninth. The army can switch units fast.
“I sent a souvenir home tonight. It is just the Swastika and number off the tail of an ME 109. We spotted it in a field with the glasses, so of course we had to go over and see what we could get off it. We certainly had a time getting the darned things—couldn’t get the bolts cut so with my pocket knife I cut through the frame work, broke the whole rudder off and lugged it back. We then cut the covering off, which was all we wanted. When you get it, smell the painted side; it’s banana oil in the lacquer. That surely took me back to the shop and painting. Gosh, I wish I could soon get back to it. I just itch to straighten out a few fenders.
“The planes are droning over in a steady stream. There’ll be an earthquake in Berlin tonight. I saw them get one of our bombers just a little while ago—it just disintegrated. Half fell rapidly and the rest floated down slowly in pieces. They got a fighter too while we were watching. Tough luck, but we have to expect to lose some for all the thousands we’re sending over.
“The roads here are all littered with wrecks and junk, though few are worth fixing. We find lots of motorcycles and motor bikes, practically all two cycle. We fix them up with this and that until we have them running. Most of the roads are so full of shell holes it’s hard to find a stretch to open them up on to see how fast they will go.
“It would be hard for anyone not seeing it to imagine the devastation here. If you can imagine all the towns and houses in our corner of the state just demolished—towns like Wynot, Coleridge, Laurel and even Hartington without a building that has a roof or much of anything else left and not a soul left in them except the army, then you can know about what it is like over here. I’m surely glad this is Germany and not the U. S.
“To look at these places it doesn’t seem that they could start another war for fifty years. But I know better than to believe that just this material damage could force peace for any length of time. Guess we will know more about that in the years to come.
“I hope the Russians get to Berlin soon. I wouldn’t care if they met us in Cologne. We seem to be taking a long time to get going but even though we don’t know what the big shots are figuring we’re sure they know what they are doing.”
World War II
