Cooper, Ben_2005/08/25, Oral History, August 25, 2005

Ben Cooper, JWV, Post Historian Jewish War Veterans Post 45 8/25/2005



Bob Goldman: This is August 25th, 2005 and I’m in the home of Ben Cooper who lives in West Hartford. And we’re about to do a little story about his war time experiences in World War II. Ben’s a member of Laurel Post 45 of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States.

Bob Goldman: Were you drafted or did you enlist Ben?

BC: I was drafted September 25th, 1942.

Bob Goldman: Okay.

BC: In West Hartford.

Bob Goldman: Were you living in West Hartford at that time?

BC: Yes.

Bob Goldman: The next question here is “why did you join”. ‘cuz Uncle Sam wanted you. (Laughing)

BC: Not only that. I wanted to get into the service. I didn’t want to be in the Infantry but I did want to do something in the service. In fact, I applied for what they call armor service, taking care of planes and stuff like that.

Bob Goldman: Why did you pick your branch of service?

BC: All my buddies were, at that time, friends I had; they were all going into the Army. And uh, I figured the Army was the best place to go.

Bob Goldman: What did it feel like?

BC: When, when I joined?

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: Uh, I had no, I was very green. Well, let’s see. I was twenty years, about twenty or twenty-one, I forgot already but I had no idea. It was a brand new experience. I had never been away from home like that before, you know.

Bob Goldman: Yeah. BC: Uh, so it was something to look forward to but I didn’t know what the hell to expect.

Bob Goldman: I think we all did it with a little bit of trepidation.

BC: Yes, absolutely.

Bob Goldman: Tell me about your boot camp or your training experience.

BC: Uh, first I was sent to Camp Devens, Mass. Fort Devens I think it was at that time and there we were evaluated and I find out now that it didn’t make any difference what your background was, uh, it was kind of troops they needed at that time.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: And apparently they needed medics and they sent a whole group of us, oh, maybe I don’t know, four or five hundred of us to Camp Barkley, Texas, by train. And I had letters, I worked, before I was drafted, I worked at Colt’s, testing machine guns.

Bob Goldman: Oh, (Chuckling)

BC: And I came, I was very prolific at it. I could take them apart, put them together, use live ammunition and I had a letter from them stating how good I was.

Bob Goldman: Oh yeah. (Chuckling)

BC: You’re going to be a medic! So they sent us to Camp Barkley. We travelled by train. I’ll never forget the shades had to be drawn. We went to Chicago first where we transferred to another train and it was a regular troop train filled with green soldiers like I was, you know. We went to Camp Barkley and that’s where I started my medical training. Camp Barkley was, before that it was an Infantry training ground, but now it changed to a medical training facility.

Bob Goldman: Do you remember any of your instructors?

BC: Uh, I remember my Sergeant. I don’t remember them by name. Yes, no, I don’t remember. We had activities every day. We went on bivouac. We had, actually, basic infantry training without a gun, though, that’s what it was. And it took quite a while. But what happened was, on a twenty mile hike, I think it was twenty, twenty-five miles, we had to take long hikes, we’re marching along with a full pack on our back and it was in Texas, real hot as hell and all of a sudden I thought I stepped on a nail and well, I was in agony and they took me out of the line, put me in the ambulance, took me back to the hospital and they found out that I had, what the hell do they call it, one of my bones, a bone spur came out from my left foot and that was the problem so they transferred me out of the medical to Camp Ordinance. I ended up with Ordinance and I had a desk job and it was great. I stayed there until I went overseas. Bob Goldman: Uh, how did you get through this special training.

BC: I just did what I had to do, that’s all. There was nothing really special, you know, I just had the basic training but when I stayed at camp I had a terrific desk job and I met a lot of people there.

Bob Goldman: Did you serve in the United States or overseas, and how long?

BC: I was in the United States until, uh, until September 1st of ’44 and then I went overseas and stayed there until September of ’45.

Bob Goldman: Yeah. How long was this overseas duty?

BC: One year.

Bob Goldman: One year.

BC: Yeah, exactly one year.

Bob Goldman: In your initial experiences in the Army did you experience any anti-Semitism?

BC: No. I really didn’t, not in the United States. Overseas, I did but not in the United States.

Bob Goldman: We’re going into the segment called experiences. You served during World War II.

BC: Right.

Bob Goldman: Where exactly did you go?

BC: Alright, we left Norfolk, Virginia. We left on a liberty ship. We joined about a hundred other liberty ships. It took us thirty days to cross the Atlantic Ocean. We were very slow but we had the D.E., the Destroyer Escorts that went between the boats all the time. It took us a long time. We finally, we had no idea where we were going, they don’t tell you a thing we went through the Straits of Gibraltor, the Mediterranean Sea, we landed in Naples, Italy.

Bob Goldman: Uh, huh. Uh, on arriving, do you remember what it was like there?

BC: Yes, I sure do. It was right on Yom Kippur.

Bob Goldman: Oh, yeah?

BC: I remember that day specifically, I was on the boat and we were docked and we had barrage balloons on both sides of the ship to protect us from any planes that might try to strafe us while we were there. They took us and put us in trucks, and uh, this was in Naples, and they took us outside of Naples to a town called Caserta.

Bob Goldman: I know about that.

BC: And there I found a Repple-Depple. I never heard of a Repple-Depple before and this is where I found out that I wasn’t going to be a medic replacement in the hospital but I was going to be in an infantry outfit.

Bob Goldman: Oh, boy.

BC: While we were there they gave us three things that I really enjoyed: letters from home – the first time we got letters, a pack of cigarettes – very popular, I never smoked so I’d give the cigarettes to a buddy, and a bottle of Coca-Cola. A glass bottle, you know? And I’d trade the cigarettes for a bottle of Coke and that was the highlight of the day. But every day they called us out. We had to stand in formation and they called our serial numbers out. If you were called you were gonna be assigned to one of three infantry divisions, the 45th, the third, or the 46th and they were getting replacements for them. And my number came up and I was being assigned to the 45th Infantry.

Bob Goldman: Okay, um, did you see combat?

BC: Yes I did.

Bob Goldman: Yeah. Were there many casualties in your unit?

BC: Uh, there were quite a bit a few. I can’t tell you how many. I never kept records but there was always casualties. As a medic I got assigned, I joined the outfit in the middle of France. They put us on the boat from Naples and we went to Marseilles and we got off the boat and we had to board the forty and eight freight trains. No latrines, just plain freight trains. It took us six days to get up to the middle of France. You know why? We used to get sidetracked a lot. Ammunition had priority when we were going to the front. You should see these large freight trains. Shelves, gigantic, they would scare the hell out of you just looking at it as they go by. And the other thing was kind of embarrassing. No latrines, so if you had to go to the bathroom, you had to climb out the door and go between the freight trains and do what you had to do and climb back, try to get back into the train, you know.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: At times you would go through passenger stations, going up in France, you know, people are standing there and here we are doing what we had to do, you know, really.

Bob Goldman: Well, you had to do what you had to do.

BC: You had to do it. We finally got off the train at a town called Contrexeville, in France. And then they split us into groups and, uh, being a medic I was gonna to be assigned to an aid station.

Bob Goldman: Okay. Uh, here’s a chance, and I want you at this point, I think you’re gonna shine on this question; tell me about the most memorable experiences you had.

BC: Well, I guess there were a few but let me just tell you one that was leading up to Dachau. Before we reached Dachau, a concentration camp, there’s the city of Nuremburg and Nuremburg is a very large city. I guess it was something like New York City.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: It was heavily bombed by our, by the Allies. But there were three divisions, our outfit, the 33rd and I think the 36th were trying to capture Nuremburg. Being a combat medic I was assigned to a platoon, with an end-tank platoon and I was assigned to “C” Company of the 179th Infantry Regiment, and I stayed with them practically all through the war. And we were assigned to take care of a small bridge over a canal about eight miles east of Nuremburg which is inside Germany. And we went to the bridge, we took our, we always took a shovel with us, remember the shovel, and the first thing you do is start digging a fox hole, you know. And we dug a fox hole and I was with a machine gunner at that time and we were facing the road that led to Nuremburg. And everything was quiet and in the middle of the night all hell broke loose. Apparently some Nazis escaped from Nuremburg and were coming down the road. It was pitch black. You couldn’t hear a damn thing, you couldn’t see nothing, you couldn’t hear nothing and I could hear the zip guns, you know, the Nazis they have zip guns, you know, like machine guns. And we were going back and forth. We would shoot at them and they were shooting at us and I would keep my head low and the machine gunner would fire a few shots toward the road and then stop because

Bob Goldman: They’d spot the lights.

BC: Right. The Nazis could spot the traces, where the bullets are coming from so he’d stop and duck down and then there was a lull. And the Sergeant came up to me, he called me Doc, in my outfit. In some Infantry outfits they call them medic but they called me Doc. And he said “Doc, I want you to go back into town and tell them that we need some more support”. And I said “How do I get there?” and he said “Just go cross over the bridge and take a left. Just keep going but you gotta know the password.” And the password that night was Arrow Head, two words. He said “Just keep going. You’ll be stopped”. So I started walking and it was pitch black, I couldn’t see anything, I whistled, I said the Lord’s Prayer to myself, and I walked through the valley of the shadow, and all of a sudden I heard the word “Halt!” and I hear the word “arrow” and I said “head”. He says “keep your hands up”. I had my armband on but I didn’t have my medical, I had taken it and laid it down next to me in the foxhole, you know. And he marched me with my hands up to the Command Post in town. It must have been maybe about maybe a mile away, or a half mile, around there. And I met the Captain there. I found out he was Captain Blythe, they called him “Snake Eyes”, and he said “What are you here for?” and I said “The Sergeant” and I his name, “told me we need more reinforcements. He said we don’t have enough”. So he said “Okay” and we got some more troops, we had a tank, we went back. By the time we got back to the bridge it was starting to get daylight. And the tank sat on top of the bridge and shot straight into the woods. Boy, when you got a tank shooting at you, you know, that scares the party, fierce artillery. So they came running out. The ones that dropped their guns we took as prisoners and the ones that didn’t drop their guns they shot them, they killed them right there. When the shooting was over we had around sixty Nazis that we had captured. They were all sitting in a group and I went to retrieve my medical kit and it was all shot up. Completely destroyed.

Bob Goldman: Mmm.

BC: It was a canvas bag, you know. So among the Nazis there’s a German medic. He has his Red Cross armband, he has a red cross on his helmet and he had a beautiful medical kit, a leather one, beautiful. Now Jewish and German is very similar so I walked up to him, I said to him in my German-Jewish fashion “Ich vus haben das” (sp?) which means “I need that”

Bob Goldman: Mmm.

BC: And he says “Nein! Nein!” and I said “Ja! Ja!” (Laughing) and I took it and I used it from that time on until the end of the war. That was one incident.

Bob Goldman: I want you to talk about your experiences at Dachau.

BC: I guess I’m coming to that.

Bob Goldman: Yeah, ok.

BC: We, uh, we started toward Munich and part of my outfit, the 157th Infantry, the Colonel got orders to secure the camp, don’t let anybody in and don’t let anybody out. And my outfit, the part that I was in which was the 179th, we ended up in Munich, Germany. We didn’t, we weren’t at Dachau at all at the first wave. We were there I think just a day in Munich when Eisenhower ordered as many troops to go back to the concentration camps to be a witness. And so they put us in trucks, medics and we started toward Dachau. I had no idea what I was gonna see, or what the hell it was about. I had a camera. I didn’t have no film, I guess, at that time ‘cuz I used to take pictures. As we got near Dachau the stench of burning flesh just permeated the whole area. It was rancid. It was awful. You couldn’t imagine what the hell was going on. We finally drove up to the main gate, “Arbeit macht frei”, “Work makes free”, you know? And the Captain said “there’s a lot of dysentery and typhus around and we’re not gonna let you walk around the camp but we’re gonna let you in a big open field right here beyond the gate. Those that can walk can come up to you there, they can come up and talk to you. Half the camp, forget it. They just can’t do it. So we went up into this big open field and gradually we saw these corpses, living corpses coming toward us, you know. They were dressed in like blue and white pajamas, shaded, you know, striped. And they came up to us and start talking, grabbing us by the shoulder, by the arm, and talking to us about names, people they knew in the United States, or you know, something. I was really traumatized by it. It bothers me to this day. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I think if they weighed fifty, sixty pounds that’s a lot. And this, this, it’s horrible. I just can’t believe what I was looking at. It was terrible and the stench was horrible in the camp. But I found out, afterwards, our troops that got there first, most of them were Native Americans, my outfit was made up, mostly made up, of Native Americans.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: When they first went over. They found thirty-nine freight cars half in the camp, and half out of the camp. The camp was three miles square, that’s how big it was. They were loaded with men and women. They had been brutally beaten, starved to death. They were being transferred from another camp because the allies were over reaching some other camps up North and they were sending them to Dachau.

Bob Goldman: To burn them.

BC: They killed, they killed. They had no, the other camps were being liberated. So then Dachau was getting closer and they just left them in the freight trains. They shot them, they killed them, they were laying on the ground. It was horrible. I didn’t see it but I have pictures. My Captain gave me a lot of pictures that he took of Dachau. And he also told me there were thirty-nine barracks, single-story barracks. Each barrack was supposed to hold about four hundred in between. It was holding sixteen hundred.

Bob Goldman: Hmm!

BC: Horrible! The sick, the living and the dying were all there. It was a horrible thing. And of course that’s what I witnessed at Dachau.

Bob Goldman: This next segment will deal with your life and some of the things that you were involved in. How did you stay in touch with your family?

BC: I used to write “V” mail to them, more or less. You probably called it “V” mail.

Bob Goldman: Yeah, I know them.

BC: Our letters were censored, of course. I never told where I was or what I, I could say somewhere in France or somewhere in Germany but I couldn’t say specifically where I was. And my wife and I just got married one, just about, we got married July of ’44 just before I went overseas. And, uh, and she wrote to me quite a few letters and, uh, we, that’s how we corresponded. But as I, when I became a combat medic, I became very superstitious about writing letters home ‘cuz I used to see a lot of replacements coming in to our group. Bob Goldman: Yeah,

BC: And the first thing you do is sit down and write a letter to their loved ones. And then on the same day, the next day, a week, they’re gone, they’re either killed or wounded and I said “the hell with this. I’m not gonna write home. It might be my last letter.” But I did write one big letter when the war was over, in Munich, my wife and I did, explained everything that I did.

Bob Goldman: Yeah, ok. What was the food like, during your Army experience?

BC: Well, there’s “K” rations and the “C” rations. I remember the eggs.

Bob Goldman: Powdered?

BC: Powdered egg. You add water and it would blow up into an egg. It was horrible. We had Spam. I liked the Spam. I was hungry.

Bob Goldman: (Laughing)

BC: Uh, but there wasn’t much, there wasn’t really much food until we got to Germany and then I had fresh eggs.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: And, uh, I used to be the chef for our platoon. We get a house, we’d occupy a house and have the Germans move out and take the house over. This is during the war.

Bob Goldman: Did you have plenty of supplies, the supplies that you needed?

BC: Yes, I think we did, yeah.

Bob Goldman: Um, hmm.

BC: I think we got, sure.

Bob Goldman: What about pressure or stress? I think you e

BC: Pressure, you’re always. I can’t remember a time that I really felt relaxed because if it wasn’t we were attacking them they were attacking us or were shelling us and it was going back and forth and you just never knew when the hell the shell was gonna hit you. We finally learned, then as I did, we all did, which shells were going in and which shells were going out. (laughing).

Bob Goldman: (Laughing).

BC: By the noise they make, you know. Bob Goldman: Did you see any entertainers overseas?

BC: Yeah, when the war ended, I can’t remember if we

Bob Goldman: USO Troops?

BC: USO was in the hangar in Munich at the airport. There was a very large group that came over and we did have some entertainers, yes.

Bob Goldman: Yeah, I saw Bob Hope in the Pacific.

BC: Did you really?

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: That’s great.

Bob Goldman: What did you do on leave? Did you have any leave in Europe?

BC: Uh, not really, uh, no. I gotta tell you this though. We were fighting, can I go back a minute?

Bob Goldman: Sure.

BC: We were fighting in Germany in February, 1945 and apparently we needed a rest so they gave us a three day rest. They took other troops, and brought ‘em in, took our place at the front, put us in trucks and they brought us back to France, which was completely free, and we stopped in a town called Luneville.

Bob Goldman: Do you recall any particular.

BC: Wait, let me tell you what happened. We stopped in a town called Luneville. I got off the truck and walked around and I came across a synagogue, beautiful edifice, stone building. The inside was completely gutted. It was all black. The outside was beautiful. And I’m standing there and a Frenchman walked up to me with three little girls. At that time I had my camera with film in it, okay. This was in February of ’45. And he started talking French to me. Well, I took French at Hall before I graduated in 1940 here in West Hartford, and I said to him “parlez lentement, s’il vous plait, speak slowly if you will” but he rambled on fast, you know. So I took it to understand that the three girls were four, six and eight years old. Adorable, and I thought those were his daughters. I asked him to take a picture of me with his daughters, which he did. And the picture wasn’t developed until after the war. I didn’t know if it came out or not. Nut it did come out. But he gave me something that I treasure to this day. He gave me the yellow Star of Davis that he had to wear when the Nazis took over France. And I still have it and I show this when I give talks to students. This is the actual yellow Star of David. It says "Juif” on it. Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: In German, the yellow star in German says Jude, J-U-D-E. So I treasure it to this day. But anyway, when I came back to the States, I tried to find out the name, you know, he gave me his name but I forgot. I never got an answer until four years ago. I was speaking at Simsbury High and the French teacher, Betty Fernandez, took it upon herself to have the students, it was about 20, write to the town. To make a long story short I now call one of them every month in France.

Bob Goldman: Oh, yeah?

BC: She’s about sixty-two or sixty-three. She speaks very good English, she taught English in the town, in Luneville, and so I call her and see how’s she’s doing. And the other girl, only two were sisters. The other one moved to Israel and I haven’t heard a word.

Bob Goldman: These were Jewish girls?

BC: All Jewish girls.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: And two were sisters and one was a friend that was visiting. And she told me how she survived the Nazis when they took over France and what happened to her grandpa. They took him away and she never saw him again.

Bob Goldman: Do you recall any humorous or unusual event?

BC: Humorous? There probably were but I don’t think it was funny (laughing).

Bob Goldman: (Laughing). The times weren’t funny times, were they?

BC: No, they weren’t funny. When I look back sometimes it seems funny but right now I can’t recall anything else too humorous, right off the bat.

Bob Goldman: What did you think of the officers or your fellow servicepeople?

BC: They were great. I really liked them a lot. I mean, I just gotta tell ya, there was one, my officer in the Aid Station, the Aid Station was about five hundred yards.

Bob Goldman: The officer at the Aid Station was a doctor?

BC: He was, I thought he was a doctor, but I found out he wasn’t. He volunteered. He was an Infantryman and he volunteered to be the doctor because the doctor got wounded or something, you know, so he took his place but while we were there, while I was at the Aid Station at the beginning, before I went up to the platoon, he used to tell jokes, about Jews, and he didn’t know that I was Jewish. And I finally walked up to him and I says, I says “Lieutenant, I want you to know that I’m Jewish and I resent those Jewish retorts.” “Oh”, he says, “I didn’t know you were Jewish”. From that time on he never said it again.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: I have, I was in touch with him when I got out of the service, up ‘til about five years ago. He just passed away this past year. We were very good friends now. I never talked about what he said but I did tell him when I first contacted him in Ohio, I said “I don’t know if you remember me”, I said but I said “I’m the one, I’m the Jewish fellow that was in your outfit.

Bob Goldman: (Laughing)

BC: “Oh yes, yes”, he remembered.

Bob Goldman: Did you keep a personal diary?

BC: I didn’t keep a personal diary but fortunately I can remember a lot of incidents in my head, uh, that seem very clear and some things are just blacked out but a lot of things I can remember.

Bob Goldman: Now this is after the service.

BC: Right.

Bob Goldman: Do you recall the day your service ended?

BC: Oh sure, it ended November, uh, when I got out of the service it was November of 1945.

Bob Goldman: And where were you at that time?

BC: At Fort Dix.

Bob Goldman: Okay. What did you do in the days and weeks afterwards?

BC: Until I got discharged completely I worked in the, my father’s package store. I was gonna go back to college but I didn’t. He had a little package store on New Park Avenue and Prospect Avenue.

Bob Goldman: My next question was “did you work or did you go back to school?”(laughing).

BC: No, I didn’t. I wish I had but I didn’t.

Bob Goldman: Uh, evidently, then your education wasn’t supported by a G.I., G.I. bill.

BC: No, I didn’t take advantage of it.

Bob Goldman: Did you make any close friendships while in the service?

BC: Uh, I did, uh, I tried to find out, the only way I found out my buddies, my commanding officer from my platoon and so forth, was the, uh, on the IBM machine, the computer. I knew what state he was from but I didn’t know where he lived, you know, I just had an idea, because when the war ended we had a newspaper printed by our division, War Ends, and I had my buddies sign where they were from.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: So at least it gave me an idea, you know. So I found at least a half a dozen of my buddies but unfortunately they passed away in the past few years.

Bob Goldman: Did you, obviously you joined a veterans organization, ‘cuz you’re a member of the Jewish War Veterans.

BC: I joined, I joined the Laurel Post when it was first in Hartford.

Bob Goldman: Yeah.

BC: I joined then.

Bob Goldman: Okay.

BC: And then they booked up, I guess, it was Post 45, you know, what it is now.

Bob Goldman: This is the later years, in the closing, what did you do for a career after the war?

BC: Uh, I worked in the package store for my father, uh, until 1970. And I couldn’t stand the business anymore because we had tragedy in 1950 where my uncle was killed by … And then I took a test for the State of Connecticut and became an inspector for the Liquor Control Commission.

Bob Goldman: Okay.

BC: And I retired in 1987 as Chief Inspector for the Liquor Control Commission.

Bob Goldman: Did your military experience influence how you think about war or about the military in general?

BC: Uh, only to the fact that I wouldn’t join the Reserves. They asked if you wanted to join the Reserves at the end of the war and think I had enough of it, you know. But no, I didn’t do.

Bob Goldman: Did you attend any reunions?

BC: Uh, they have a reunion every year in Oklahoma for the 45th. Unfortunately, I haven’t attended one, but I have but I have been in touch with my buddies. And I’ve also been in touch with the General who was in charge of the liberation of Dachau.

Bob Goldman: Uh, hmm.

BC: He’s now ninety-six.

Bob Goldman: Okay. How did your, your service experience affect your life?

BC: Uh, the service, I was proud, naturally, to have served but it’s affected my life only from what I saw about the Holocaust. Uh, people, like I’ve said before and I say it again. My heroes are anyone who survived the concentration camp. Uh, I just can’t believe what, what I went through was bad but what they went through was a thousand times worse. They are my heroes.

Bob Goldman: Is there anything you’d like to add that we haven’t covered?

BC: Uh, I just want to say, in my talks to students or … Wherever I talk I try to emphasize that the Holocaust really happened and people who say it never did, it’s just not true. It really happened and I also try to tell them just remember this: no act of kindness, no matter how small is ever wasted. I say think that over now. I get letters from the students that are really my treasure. I really treasure them because some of them, they really get the point.

Bob Goldman: Ok, thanks very much, Ben. This is Bob Goldman, the Post Historian and I did the interview with Ben.