Jack Capell

Frankel: Will you please begin by stating your full name and birthdate?
CAPELL: My name is John C. (stands for Carver) Capell, but I am known as Jack and have been nearly all my life. 

Frankel: And you were born on?
CAPELL: I was born on June 11th, 1923 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 

Frankel: Is that where you grew up?
CAPELL: No, I lived for a very short time in Hamilton and then for a time in Toronto. And by the time I was three years old I was heading for Vancouver, BC. I lived in Vancouver, BC until just before I started school. Then I came to Seattle and started school in Seattle. And that’s really where I had all my schooling and was there right up until the time I was inducted into the Army. 

Frankel: Can you tell us a little bit about your family? How long they had lived in Canada, if they came from or were born in a different country.
CAPELL: My father was born in England. They came to Canada when he was about four years old and lived in Ontario all that time. My mother was born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and lived in Vancouver and then moved to the States for a short time where she met my father. He was serving in a… well let’s see I don’t know exactly where she did meet him. But he was serving in the Canadian army at the time and he was stationed at Victoria, British Columbia. 

Frankel: Any siblings?
CAPELL: No.

Frankel: No siblings, OK. Can you tell us about growing up? What the economic situation was like in your family? Do you have pleasant memories? Religious affiliations?
CAPELL: Well my father was a pharmacist and he owned and operated a drug store in Hamilton. But there was illness in my family. My uncle also was in the drug business and became very ill with Polio and my father helped him in his business and still maintained his own. But my mother particularly helped him. That’s why she moved to Toronto while he remained in Hamilton. She moved to Toronto to straighten out some of the financial difficulties of my uncle. And then I don’t know why my parents decided to move out to Vancouver and sell the drug store in Hamilton but it had something to do with the financial problems the family had due to the illness and my uncle losing his business, really going bankrupt. We came out to Vancouver then, and he went to work for Owl Drug Store in Vancouver and then decided he wanted to come to the States because he had – oh I had forgotten, when he was younger, before he was in the army, he had had a job in southern California. He was working for a pharmaceutical company and was opening drug stores in various parts of southern California, opening and managing them until they got started operating. And then he came up and joined the army; that was it. But he liked the states and he wanted to settle in the states so he left his job in Canada and came to Seattle without a job, and found a job and worked for Bartell Drug Store and then brought us down. And he worked for Bartell Drug right up until the time he died.

Frankel: Did you belong to any church affiliation or denomination?
CAPELL: Well it was originally Methodist Episcopal and then that became the Methodist church. So I really grew up as belonging to Seaview Methodist Church in west Seattle. 

Frankel: Would you say that you were a religious family and that you would go regularly to church?
CAPELL: Yes, we went regularly. Yes. 

Frankel: And do you have fond memories of your childhood?
CAPELL: Yes, I had a good family. Parents were excellent. The only problems they had was my mother got cancer when I was about 13 or 14 years old. And this had quite an impact on our finances because at that time they were just beginning radiation treatments and they were very, very expensive. We had no health insurance and my father spent everything we had for her treatment. And then she got another bout of it about a year later. So at that time, during part of that period, I was staying at home but I was actually having my meals with another family. So our family was separated due to the fact that my mother was in the hospital. My father was quite busy because at that time (and it was right during the Depression), he was assistant manager of a drug store and they worked many, many hours. He worked 13 days out of 14 for a long time and worked 12 hours a day, and the rest of the time he would go up to see my mother. So I didn’t see very much of them for a while. And then another bout of cancer and that really put us into debt, even though he continued to work. I went to work when I was quite young. Although I stayed in school (I just did part time) but I worked all I could. So I didn’t participate very much in school activities because of that. And during the Depression days, the early ‘30s, we did very well because my father had a steady job and most people didn’t in our neighborhood. So we did well during that period but then when the illness came then we went down very fast. 

Frankel: Were your parents or your father or yourself involved politically in anyway?
CAPELL: Not actively, no. I think my mother leaned a little toward the Republican Party at the time. My father, I am not sure either way. It depended upon what the situation was.

Frankel: Did your mother recover?
CAPELL: Yes she did. She lived to be 89 years old. She recovered from two bouts of cancer in the 1930s and then again in the late 1960s she got it again and recovered from that. 

Frankel: So what kind of education? You went to elementary, high school?
CAPELL: Yes elementary, junior high school and high school. Graduated from high school in West Seattle. I did not go to college until after the army. I did go to University of Washington on the GI Bill of Rights. 

Frankel: That was after the war?
CAPELL: After the war, yes. 

Frankel: So did you join the army or were you drafted in the army?
CAPELL: No, I was a peculiar situation. I was considered a Canadian, an alien actually. Didn’t realize that but it was due to the illness. My parents didn’t complete their schooling for citizenship papers. They had started to in the 1930s but then when my mother got sick, they dropped it. And then went back to resume to get the papers. Their papers didn’t come through until I was 18 years old and the government considered that I was not a citizen. Because I was 18 when my parents got their papers. 

Frankel: So you were never drafted in other words?
CAPELL: I could not enlist. I wanted to enlist in the Navy or Coast Guard. Army was my last choice. I could not enlist. I couldn’t go in the Merchant Marine, which I wanted to very much. So I had to wait to be drafted. But I was eligible for the draft. I was a resident of the States, and if you are a resident and healthy you were eligible for the draft. So they said, “Don’t worry about it. You will be able to select your branch of service after you are drafted.” And so I did select. I selected first the Coast Guard because I had friends there, and they said, “No, that’s full.” Navy?  “No, that’s full.” Marines? “No.” Army? So that’s why I ended up in the army.

Frankel: When were you drafted?
CAPELL: I was drafted in April of 1943. 

Frankel: Now what did you do after high school before the army?
CAPELL: I first worked around fishing boats repairing and working on the boat. I got more money for repairing so did mostly that. But when they needed a crew I would go out and go on the boat. And I liked working around the water very much but it didn’t pay very much. I also had my own little fishing boat, which I used to catch salmon and sell on a bootleg basis because I didn’t have a license, which a lot of people were doing at that time. Then I had decided that I would have to take a job that paid a little more. I was offered a job driving a truck and that paid more so I went to that. And then I got a job about six months later with a company that I liked very much and was a good truck driving job that was Lake [Moffentown] Paper Company. So I did that for about a year until I was drafted. 

Frankel: Do you remember when the war broke out?
CAPELL: Well, Pearl Harbor, December 6th, 1941.

Frankel: Do you remember where you were? 
CAPELL: I had just started working for this first truck-driving job I had, which was for a bookbindery. And when the news came? No, I don’t remember exactly where I was or what I did when the news first came. 

Frankel: But even before the United States entered the war, when it officially started, did you follow the news? Were you interested?
CAPELL: Oh very much interested, yes. I listened to the news every night. We used to get the reports by radio and I followed that as closely as I could. Yes, I was very interested. 

Frankel: Do you recall reading anything about the persecution of the Jews at the time? Or just the Nazi invasions?
CAPELL: We heard that, off and on. In fact when I was in junior high school we had people that came and talked to us and told us about the Nazi situation in Germany. And we realized that there was this oppression going on. But I did not by any means realize the extent of it. And as far as the actions the Nazis took against the Jews prior to their actually beginning the war, I wasn’t aware of the extent of those things. The Kristallnacht, I won’t say that I was aware of that. 

Frankel: You were not?
CAPELL: Not that I remember, no. I mean we may have heard, but no, not in detail. It didn’t stick in my mind so I am sure I was not aware of it. 

Frankel: Also growing up, did you have Jewish neighbors or Jewish friends?
CAPELL: No. I found out that there were some Jewish people in my high school class which I didn’t even realize were Jewish until afterward. And one is a friend right now. Marilyn Forse, who lives here in Portland, who you undoubtedly know. She was a graduate the same time I was and I didn’t realize she was Jewish. No, actually I lived in a neighborhood, in a district, that was almost all White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and some Catholic. But there weren’t very many Jews. There were a few Italians. No Orientals, no Blacks. It was a neighborhood that wasn’t even open to the Blacks. But a few Orientals did live kind of on the edges of the neighborhood. And the Italians were somewhat accepted but that was about the limit. 

Frankel: And so in 1943 you said you were drafted?
CAPELL: Yes.

Frankel: Can you tell us about how it happened, where you were taken first, when you were shipped over to Europe?
CAPELL: Yes. I was drafted through a draft board in Seattle. I was inducted in the Army in Seattle; that was about the end of April. And then I was sent to Fort Lewis, which is just south of Tacoma, Washington and was there for maybe a couple of weeks. I don’t remember exactly how long it was. And then from there I was sent by train down to Camp Roberts, California to train for the infantry. I had no choice in where I was going to be, what part of the army I was going to be in. They just put me in the infantry. I was healthy and that’s who they wanted for the infantry. So I took infantry training during the summer of 1943. I think I got down there in May and I was there until August and we were actually on a desert. It’s not a desert now because they have irrigated in that area. But it was used for desert training and it was a very hot summer so I was really trained for desert training because they were fighting in North Africa when I first went down there. But that pretty well wound up before even the training was over. Then from there I was sent back to Fort Benning, Georgia. 

And what happened there was the fact that I was on a training exercise and I happened to be put in charge of a platoon. They were testing out different people to see how they would handle a platoon on a mock battle. And I happened to be in charge and I was able to capture a hill, and I impressed the colonel of the camp very much and he said, “I want this man off to Candidate school.” So I had been told that I wouldn’t have a problem with my citizenship when I got in the Army, that I would automatically get my papers. However, that was not the case. I had to apply for them again and the red tape took a long time and when I was selected for officer candidate school I was not a citizen. But I didn’t tell the camp commander that, or our training company commander. I figured, “Well my papers will come through very shortly. I don’t want to have to complicate things by telling them I am not a citizen.” However, it was discovered that I was not a citizen and they said, “We can’t send you to Officer Candidate school.” And the company commander was very unhappy about the fact that I hadn’t told him. But he said, “I will do this for you, I will send you back to Fort Benning and if you can get your papers when you get there, then you can move right in to the Officer Candidate school.” But in the meantime I will have to put you in the motor mechanic school in Fort Benning in order to hold you there. So I was held there for three months and I still didn’t get my papers, but right at the end of the time, I did. And I got them in Columbus, Georgia. By that time I was assigned to an overseas unit so I went directly overseas. Now I trained for motor mechanic for three months intensive training in Georgia and was never used for that because they needed infantry rifleman. So I was sent overseas as a rifleman. 

Frankel: Do you remember when that was when you were sent over?
CAPELL: Yes. It was in December that I was moved up from Fort Benning up to Fort Meade, Maryland and then to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, which is an embarkation camp. And it was in January of ’44 that I actually got on the ship, the Mauritania, to go to England. 

Frankel: What was your rank at the time?
CAPELL: I was a private.

Frankel: And what unit of the Army were you attached to?
CAPELL: Well at that time I wasn’t assigned. I was a replacement, and I am not sure… I went over and was put in the 4th Infantry Division, actually I knew I was in the 4th Infantry Division before I went over because they had replacements that were going to the 4th Infantry and I apparently was among them. But I knew so little about what was going on that I am not even sure of that except that I know that some of the fellows I went overseas with wound up as replacements in the 4th Division. And I was told that I was slated to be in the 4th Infantry Division. So after arriving in Liverpool we were sent to another camp for a few days. And then I was sent down to southern England in Devonshire where I was actually put in a camp with the 4th Division. I don’t believe we were attached at that time to an army, but I am not sure. I am not really sure about that because when we made the invasion we were in the 1st Army. But I am not sure when that decision was made as to what was the 1st Army. Well the 1st Army was the one that made all the invasions, that’s right. And then the 3rd Army came in later under Patton. Then the 7th and the 9th later on. 

Frankel: So you were actually part of the D-Day invasion?
CAPELL: I landed on D-Day; I landed on the morning of D-Day. 

Frankel: Can you tell us a little bit about your preparation? I mean what were you told and what was it like?
CAPELL: Well we trained for an invasion from the time I got there in late January right up until the invasion took place. And although we didn’t have any definite briefing on where we were going to hit or just how, we knew that’s what we were working toward. And we knew it would be an amphibious invasion because that was a large part of our training. And by the way, I was a rifleman but I was also assigned to a wire section of a communications platoon so that even though I was a rifleman my basic job was to lay wire along the ground between the command post, and that’s what I was training particularly for. But also we were doing other things too that were more in the realm of what a rifleman would do in a rifle company. And we made many practice invasions on the English coast. And there was one, which was quite infamous because it was covered up for many, many years. But we made an invasion practice landing on Slapton Sands and Lime Bay in southern England. And during that practice, there was live ammunition all through it of course, and some firing against the shore hit some of our men. That was bad enough, but then during the night, after I had landed, our rear echelon troops of our division were still out at sea and German torpedo boats found them and the count that they give now is 749 men killed. 

Frankel: There were so close to the coast of England? 
CAPELL: Yes. We would go out on these practice invasions, we would go well out to sea in the English Channel and then come back in. And they came across at night. The way it was arranged, we were supposed to have a destroyer escort. But there was a foul-up on that. One destroyer, which was a British one, was involved in a collision when he was leaving the harbor, and they called him back and he said, “I can’t come back. My damage is not that much and I have to go out and protect this convoy.” And they overruled him and said, “Your orders are to bring that ship back.” So that ship went back and no ship went out to replace it. There was an American one out there but he somehow managed to get between the landing craft and couldn’t fire at the Germans without hitting our own landing craft. So no shots were fired against at least two German torpedo boats that came in there and sank – I don’t remember exactly now whether it was two or three of our larger landing ships. Three were hit I know, and possibly all three sunk. But at least two did. And there were many men in the water. 

And because we had inflatable lifebelts and because we wore them fairly low on our body because of our equipment, they weren’t stable. You got in the water, men would inflate their belt and they’d tip over and they couldn’t breath; they would drown. So many men were drowned just by the fact that we did not have good lifebelts. Now this may be extremely surprising to hear but I did not know this happened. I was on the beach. I was in there; we were moving inland. We were going through a regular invasion type routine and we didn’t know anything about what had happened to our rear echelon troops. And of course there were bodies all over in the water but we didn’t see that because we were up farther. And anybody that saw them was sworn to silence and shipped to another part of England and separated so that if they told the story other people wouldn’t believe them because they wouldn’t have anybody to corroborate their story. 

And there was a big cover-up and the reason it was covered up was because they were so afraid the Germans might find out that we had lost that many men and we were the division that was slated to be first on Utah Beach. And also they thought the Germans might then start looking for men in the water and some of those men had been briefed on D-Day. Now only some of the officers had been. And so they made us search and they tried to identify every person they could, every body they could find. And they found all the 10 that had been briefed, they’d found them dead. So they knew the Germans didn’t have them. But nevertheless they kept it covered up. And it was never revealed in full detail until 1984. And that was partly due to the investigation made by an Englishman who found a tank sunk there right off Slapton Sands and heard stories that had been told by people that were there and saw some of it. Now the reason there were only a few that saw it is that they evacuated all the civilians they could from that part of England because of our practice invasion and we were using live ammunition. But they did have a few people around that were left there as caretakers and so on. And they witnessed all the bodies that were being hauled away and buried in mass graves and so on. And this Englishman remembered all the stories he’d heard about it. And he found the tank; that’s why he was convinced that this was for real. So he pestered the British government for records and he made a crusade out of it until finally he was able to put together all the facts and they did admit to them and gave him all the records of what had happened. And now there is a memorial there, which he was largely responsible for setting up on Slatpon Sands Beach. Also he wrote a book about this whole incident. 

Frankel: So you in fact also only found out in ’84?
CAPELL: The full details. I knew that later each one of the landing crafts had been sunk and they admitted later on that there were about 600 men that were lost. But never – no not 600, they said “several.” Several men were lost. Several turned out to be 749. And overall in the practice invasion itself it was something around 1000 because we lost men from the naval shelling of the beach. And I think maybe possibly some from our own bombings, which were supposed to bomb ahead of us. Just two errors. And then I saw myself three men die. One a mortar shell blew up. They were firing a mortar shell at a position we were attacking and one of the men didn’t pull his hand out of the way soon enough and the mortar shell hit it and it blew up and killed them all. That happened right next to me.

Frankel: That was during practice?
CAPELL: Yes. There was so much foul-up on the practice that they concluded they learned enough that D-Day was not a complete disaster for us. They did correct some of the mistakes but it was a costly way to do it. 

Frankel: Do you remember any of the names of your commanding officers?
CAPELL: Well yes. We had a couple of pretty well known ones. Our regimental commander was Colonel James Van Fleet and he became the commanding general in the Korean Theater operations later on. He was a colonel at that time. Then our assistant division commander was Teddy Roosevelt Junior – Theodore Roosevelt Junior – the son of the President Theodore Roosevelt. And I have very fond memories of him. He died shortly after we landed. I think he died within a month anyway. 

Frankel: In the war?
CAPELL: Yes it was in the war, but it was not directly a war wound. However, he was a hard driving man and it was a matter of exhaustion and a heart condition. So I think it was directly related to the war although it was not a direct war wound.

Frankel: Now how soon after that fatal practice did you land?
CAPELL: The dates on that were, oh boy, I think it was the end of April. It was a little over a month I believe. I’ve got the book that gives the exact dates but that’s the nearest I can remember. 

Frankel: When were you told that the invasion was … how much notice did they give you?
CAPELL: Not specific. It seemed like nobody ever got out there and said, “We are going to do such and such and such,” but yet we all knew that we were going to hit the French coast. They didn’t have to tell us because that’s what we had been practicing for. We didn’t know where on the French coast we were going to hit, and we didn’t know where that was until… not really until a couple of days before. And I think June 4th – the invasion was on the 6th – June 4th was the most thorough briefing I had of exactly what we were going to do and where we were going to land. We weren’t told names on the map; we were shown what the terrain was like and where to go after we hit the beach and so on. What road to follow, what the land would look like and so on. And then the invasion was postponed, as you know, due to the storm that came up on June 5th. And so then again we were briefed later on on June 5th that we were going in on the 6th. So we did not know. We went on Utah Beach; we were the first to land on Utah Beach. But at that time I hadn’t heard those code names before and even after I heard people talking about Utah and Omaha Beach after we’d been fighting for a while I didn’t even know which beach we’d landed on. But it was Utah Beach. 

Frankel: And so what happened after the landing? Where did you go from there?
CAPELL: I was in the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division and after landing we had a fairly easy time of it compared to the other beaches. Omaha was very bad and the British and Canadian beaches were much worse than ours. Ours was very easy on D-Day and most of the casualties that I saw resulted from mines. And a lot of those were anti-personnel mines where our men had stepped on them and so on. So we had quite a few wounded but we didn’t have any problem really in getting off the beach. Now I did, because my personal situation was different. But most of our company got in without any difficulty and moved on inland. And I don’t remember how far they got the first night but it was a little short of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, or very close to Sainte-Mere-Eglise. And then I believe by the second night they were beyond Sainte-Mere-Eglise. I have those command posts on a list there and I could check it right now. 

But I was delayed because our landing craft had a problem. We had one landing craft blow up right next to us, right ahead of us actually. And apparently we may have hit some of the wreckage, I don’t know. But for some reason the commander of the landing craft dropped the ramp and said, “Get off.” And I was to take a jeep in because, as I said, I was in the wire section and I was actually assigned to drive one of the wire jeeps in. They were just an ordinary jeep with just a rack on the back that you put the reel of wire on and that was where you could pull it out to lay it on the ground. So I thought they needed that jeep in there pretty badly and I was anxious to get it in but when we went in the deep water, why it just went down. And I had two men that were with me and they couldn’t swim. They were trying to get by with those inflatable lifebelts and having a terrible time because it was still fairly rough. And I swam for shore. I didn’t inflate my lifebelt because I figured you swim better without it. And I swam for shore and got some of my equipment off and then swam back out again and brought them in. But then we still had the jeep out there. So one of them panicked and ran way up on the beach where he thought it was safer than it was where we were. The other one agreed that we should try to save the jeep because we might need it very badly for wire laying purposes. So I spent the next quite a while then, with the help of one of these ducks, that’s an amphibious vehicle – DUKW is the official designation. We called them ducks. I got on the ramp and got a winch cable off that but I couldn’t get the cable out to the jeep. So they gave me a rope and I swam out with a rope. Put the rope on the jeep then I managed to get the winch cable out there and we got that on the jeep and pulled the jeep on shore. However, it was completely filled with salt water. When I say filled, I mean the carburetor, the gas tank, everything was filled. The crank, the oil pan, the whole works. So it meant we had to disassemble all that and we spent hours doing that. And this fellow that was with me was very courageous and he stayed right there with me. We had the jeep part way up on the beach because that’s all the farther we could pull it really. And we were going to try to get it started from there. Get all the water out of it, and replace the gasoline with some we got from the DUKW driver. And we also had some oil to put in there after we got it cleaned. And we spent hours. 

And during that time, one of the very few German fighter planes that was still flying, a Messerschmitt109, came down and strafed, made two strafing runs. And he missed us by inches. We just didn’t know where to run because we were out in the middle of the beach so we just flopped under the jeep and those bullets threw sand on us they were so close and we could see them coming. So that was our closest call. Also there was shelling all the time. There were shells landing on the beach and we thought it would be real nice if we could get off that beach because we would be a lot safer if we could get up to the head of the beach and get inland. But we didn’t. We spent most of the day trying to get that jeep running, which we did. And then got it up to the head of the beach and there we had to do a little more work on it. And then we were going to start striking inland to try to find the company, but we couldn’t find them. So we came back to the beach position, stayed there for the night. And then the next morning, early, we struck out and we did find them. And we passed through the town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and then Sainte-Mere-Eglise. And then beyond that a little ways when we found the company. 

Frankel: Now, did you know what you would do once you landed?
CAPELL: Yes, we had instructions as to where we would go. We were to land and then we were to follow a causeway, which is a roadway through a flooded area. You see the Germans had released dams on the Merderet river I believe it was, and that flooded these fields so there was very little area for a regiment to move through except these little roadways that were rather narrow and confined. And we were to spot one of them as we got up to the head of the beach. However, it wasn’t there. It just wasn’t there. And the beach didn’t look the same. The beach was supposed to have some high land right behind it, a hill right behind it. Didn’t have it. It was pretty flat behind the beach. We were obviously in the wrong place. Later I found out how far we were in the wrong place. It was between a half-mile and a mile. Could have been as much as a mile off where we were. So this was discovered by – well of course we were having all the problems with the jeep so we didn’t get to the head of the beach right away. But General Roosevelt was the only high ranking officer that landed with the first troops. And he had to do that by special permission. Its very fortunate he did because when they got up there they realized, just like we did a little later on, that it was the wrong place. So he knew how far off they’d landed because he had the maps and everything. He was much more thoroughly briefed than we were. And he said, “We are not going to work our way back to where we should have been. We are going to start the war right from here.” And they went in right from there and they made it. And its probably very fortunate because had we landed right where we were assigned to land, we would have run into a German gun position, which could have finished us off. It could have made the difference between a successful landing and an unsuccessful one. So that mistake that was made was a very, very fortunate one. And apparently what happened was the Navy just placed the marker in the wrong place. They underestimated the tide speed or something, but it led us into the wrong place.  

Frankel: So once you joined the company, where did you go from there? What were your movements from there? 
CAPELL: We got into a very heavy battle and it lasted for about a week – I could look the exact dates up, I have them in my records right there – near Montebourg, which is just a little north of Sainte-Mere-Eglise. And our objective was Cherbourg at the end of the Cotentin peninsula, but we were really stuck near Montebourg for a long time. And it was very heavy fighting. And we had very little problem on D-Day but on the days following we had a very serious problem. We lost a lot of men in that battle. In fact I think they estimate our division lost around 6,000 men getting from the beach up to Cherbourg. And of course that’s a division of 15,000 at full strength. And Montebourg was probably the heaviest fighting area. After we finally did break through, then we did get up to Cherbourg on about the 26th of June. So we were almost three weeks getting up there. And Cherbourg was captured by our division and well as some others that were in at that time. 

Frankel: And from there, what happened?
CAPELL: I would be better at this point, if I could go off tape for a moment, to refer to my notes. 

Frankel: Can you tell us a little bit of the feelings among the soldiers after you landed and as you were moving?
CAPELL: Well how about if I start when we were on the landing craft? Because that’s where I think the pattern started to develop. Some guys were starting to lose their… if they ever had any nerve, their fear would show up there. Now we all had fear, there’s no question about that, its just a matter how different people handled it. Well I happened to be one of those who refused to recognize it and just laughed and joked like this is no big deal you know. And actually we became a little boisterous and a little rowdy and stole some navy rations and had the navy afraid to even come out near the deck where we were because we were just wild. Some of us were. Other ones were just kind of quite and withdrawn. But yes I did. I stole some rations from the Navy because we didn’t have good food. They had hot coffee and they had hot food and all that stuff. And we were eating these cold k-rations and we felt, “Well heck, we’re gonna have some canned food at least when we get in.” So we loaded some canned food up in the jeeps, in the vehicles. And unfortunately I lost every bit of it after the jeep sunk except one big ol’ gallon can of fruit cocktail and that’s what we had, that’s all we had. We lost all our other rations. I’ve never eaten it since; it was too sweet. It made me almost sick to eat it. And that was the last fruit cocktail I ever want. 

But as we approached the beach it became very dramatic. You’re just overwhelmed by all of the ships and the aircraft. We saw the glider troops were starting to come in. But the paratroopers we didn’t see. They went around a little different route. But the glider troops came right over the top of us, starting to come in. Some came in after we landed. In fact we saw some of the gliders crash landing. But some of them were starting to come in during that very early morning. And all the activity and everything was going on was enough to kind of keep you absorbed and just all the action, it was really overwhelming. 

And then we had to transfer from the landing craft we were on onto a smaller landing craft. And that meant driving a jeep from one craft from another in a rough sea. And that was a tricky operation. We completed that and then as we moved into the beach why we could see the action on the beach and I think the first real vision of war that we had as far as the results of it are concerned, was when we were about to hit the beach and the load of wounded were being brought back out to the landing craft. And then the bodies in the water were the next thing that we saw. And after that then of course it’s nothing, I mean you are seeing it all the time, you know, the wounds and the bodies and everything. 

But when we hit the beach I think the decision that we made to stay there and try to salvage that jeep rather than run, I think made quite a difference in our pattern of behavior. Because if we had panicked like this one guy did and run we would have been afraid. But as it was we made up our minds we were gonna do it and nothing was going to phase us and we just joked back and forth and figured if we’re gonna get hit we’re gonna get hit, but we didn’t talk much about that. I remember when we dove under the jeep when that one strafing came by, and I saw him coming back, I told this guy that was with me I says “stick your butt out a little bit this time, get some of that off of there, it’s a good chance [laughing].” So that was the kind of thing we did, I remember that particularly because he says, he said, “Well I hope it throws a lot of sand in your face and get some in your mouth so you quit making those remarks.” And that’s kind of the way we acted then. 

And then after we got up to trying to find the company early in the morning, then we had our real first view of many, many dead and some horribly mutilated bodies. And in fact I remember looking at some of the Germans thinking, “How come so many red headed Germans?” Well there was blood and I think that, you know, was our first real vision of what it was going to be like. The other was kind of just a sample, now we are really seeing the real stuff. And then after we got to Montebourg in that battle up there, why, then you just had the feeling that you’re gonna be darn lucky if you make it through. 

And what you are looking for now is to get wounded and not get wounded too bad. Just enough to get you out of it. But we were beginning to think that we weren’t going to make it. And there was one time, one night, when I thought that we weren’t even going to make the invasion, that we were going to be beat back off the beach because we were disorganized, there were men that were in our regiment that were running around saying, “I’m the only guy left from E-Company,” etc., not knowing that there were others that were scattered around that were still left. Everybody was disorganized and it was a terrible night. And I lay in my hole that night and I said, “Well, when I wake up tomorrow morning, when the sun comes up, I will either be dead or captured.” But the Germans didn’t attack. They did not realize apparently how bad they had us. And of course we might have had them pretty bad too but I think that was the worst night as far as being discouraged about being successful. Was about, somewhere a few days after D-Day.

Frankel: Then from Cherbourg what happened then?
CAPELL: Well we had moved up the Cotentin peninsula and it was pretty well cleared out. So we actually went back and rested for a couple of days and got replacements because some of our companies were down to – well for example our company, E-Company, the one picture I have that was taken by somebody three weeks after D-Day, they only had 26 men left out of a company that ran somewhere around 180 men. This was typical of many of our companies and there were many causalities and many of my friends had been killed during that period. And so we rested there for about two or three days out of combat because the peninsula was pretty well cleared by that time. And got replacements in and brought the division a little bit more back up to strength again. And then we moved down farther south. You see the Cotentin peninsula runs north. So when we landed we turned and actually headed north when we moved from Sainte-Mere-Eglise up to Cherbourg, or from Utah Beach up through Cherbourg. And so we came back south again, and went on a highway that runs between Avranches, Perrie, Sainte Lo, and through there. We were almost due south – Coutances – that’s where we were, near Carentan. But at that time we were back into combat again, so we would move only very short distance each day and usually we would move about everyday. But sometimes it might only be about a few hundred yards. And we were back into the heavy combat once again. 

And the first thing you’d do would be, as soon as you stopped, was to start digging. And if you were lucky your hole would last you through the night but if you weren’t, why they would move you again and you would have to move again and start digging a hole all over again. My job during that period was laying wire and that was a particularly dangerous job, although certainly no more than being in a rifle company where you actually had to go out on patrols. That we did not have to do, but we were laying wire mainly between two battalion command posts, and sometimes to our artillery observers who were on an outpost overlooking the enemy. And our job was dangerous because we not only had to put in the wire to begin with, and we were alone when we were doing it (we were actually three or four in a crew), but go out alone and you are going through areas which you didn’t know whether the Germans were cleared out of our not because it was kind of a matter of not being a single front line but being a series of pockets – pockets of resistance. So you might run right through a pocket of resistance and not even know it was there. And then after you did get the line laid in there – and these were, by the way, for a field telephone, that was our main method of communication – after you did get the line laid in, then shelling would take it out very often. And so where a barrage was being laid in, that’s where the line would go out first, and that’s where we had to immediately go out there and repair that line. So we were always going out in the areas that were getting the heaviest barrages. 

And then another thing that would happen would be that the Germans would sneak through, find a wire line and cut. Then they would sit back to see if anybody would come repair it and so we would run into ambushes that way. So it was a dangerous, very active job. And then we were always going into areas that had not been gone over before and no mine detection had been done on it. So we were very often running over mined areas. And we did lose quite a few of the wire crew just from hitting the mines. And one time in particular there was a German tank that was knocked out and we just had a little room to squeeze around the side of it between that and the hedgerow and I squeezed around alongside it and then there was a vehicle behind me, which also tried to do that and hit the mine. Now I went right over that mine. Completely over it, but for some reason I didn’t set it off. Apparently because of the way the tire bounced or something. Anyway, the vehicle behind us, we just saw flying way up in the air going end over end. So we went through a lot of mined areas and so we had all that – mines, ambushes, and artillery barrages. So that was a dangerous and very active job. And another thing too, on the wire section you don’t get much rest when there is a lot of activity going on, because as soon as you get the wire laid then you gotta go out a repair it when the barrage comes in. So you’re going out day and night, they could call you out anytime in the day or night, and then we would be moved so frequently – every time you moved you had to lay new lines. We didn’t pick up the old; we just laid new ones. Except if we ran real short of wire then we might pick one up, but normally they keep a wire supply up there so we could keep laying new wire. Why did we use field telephone wire instead of radio? Radio just didn’t work. We had a radio section that was all set up. But it was found that because the Germans could listen in on it, and have their own comments and jam it or whatever they wanted to do, that it wasn’t very successful. So radio was used some but it was mainly in very short distances between maybe one platoon of a company to another or something like that. But as far as from battalion to battalion, it was entire field telephones. So it meant we had to keep those lines in all the time. 

Frankel: Now the south of France was liberated in December of 1944?
CAPELL: Well we weren’t in the south of France, really. We were only in the south end of the Cotentin peninsula, which is still in northern France, still in Normandy. And you look at a map you see about where Avranches is over on the eastern – we weren’t that far south – Carentan would be the main town that we were close to. But as I say we were going through all around that area, down to that area and then across. Then we went to a highway, or near a highway called the Sainte Lo Perrier highway, and that is, where we were is about oh probably four or five miles to the west of Sainte Lo. Now Sainte Lo had been fought for in a very hard battle and finally captured. I believe it was the 1st Division was the one that involved in that. And after Sainte Lo was captured then they wanted to make a major break through so they could bring in an armored division and make a thrust right deep into France. Well Patton’s army was destined to do that. They had not been in combat yet. That was the American 3rd Army. 

So they wanted to set up a very heavy intensive bombardment of a position on the German line where the breakthrough could take place. Nothing like this had ever been attempted in history and never has been since. But that consisted of being an intensive front line bombing. And it was to take place about five miles to the west of Sainte Lo, right near that Sainte Lo Perrier Highway. And our division, the 4th Division, was put right in the middle. And we had a division on each side of us and apparently it started to plan the breakthrough for July 24th and what it was to consist of was something around 3,000 total planes. Now I have seen different figures on that, but the later figures I am seeing is about almost 1,000 dive bombers, followed by about 2,000 American heavy bombers that were mainly B-17’s and there may have been some B-25’s there too. But they were the big four-engine bombers and they were to lay down a barrage, I believe it was about a three-mile long sector, about a mile or so deep, something around that. Very small dimension anyway. And they were to do it all within either a one or a two hour period. 

And Bradley, who was the American general and commander of the 1st Army, wanted those planes to come in over the American lines and then drop their bombs and that way they would know they would not drop short. No, excuse me, I’ve got it exactly backwards. Bradley wanted to come in along parallel to the line a little bit on the German side, that was the plan. But he did not know that the air command which was actually headed by a British… and it was a command of combination of American and British and Canadian officers, but there was a British… Leigh-Mallory that I was believe in charge. He made the decision that they would not do it that way. For one thing they couldn’t get all that many bombers to lay it in such a small target area coming in that direction. They would have to come in from the other direction where they had a little more width and didn’t have to worry so much about the depth. And he said that he decided that it was too dangerous for the planes to go over German territory because of anti-aircraft. If they came over the American side then they wouldn’t have that problem. But of course there was the risk of the bombs landing short. 

Well the plan was laid down that dive-bombers would lay down a target area, a smoke line, and heavies would bomb the smoke line. What happened was there was a miscalculation on the wind direction and the wind was blowing over us, and the smoke line kept getting farther and farther back. Well I remember that the briefing of that morning, just prior to that, one of these 88 shells (armor piercing) had come zooming right over the top of my fox hole and I saw it heading back about the general direction of our regimental headquarters, where their building was. They had a little set up in a little house back there, was in a valley behind us. And sure enough here I see some, well I thought it was smoke but it was actually dust coming up from the roof of the regimental headquarters. So they obviously hit that. 

So I had this friend, the same fellow that came in with me on the beach and helped me with the beach. He at that time was regimental clerk. So I figured well I want to see if he’s alright and also what’s going on you know. So I left my hole and I ran back there and I didn’t get back there before he came out to meet me, saw me coming and that shell had gone right through the window of the regimental command post and clipped off the sole of his shoe. He showed me his shoe and said there’s where it went, sole was torn off his shoe. He had his legs crossed, he was sitting there, and it just clipped his shoe. Then it went through the next wall and it bounced around the room and it took a captains leg off and then finally wound up on another officers stomach (he was a captain also). He was asleep when it hit; well not when it hit, before it hit, and he woke up and they had to send him back, he was in complete shock. He never regained his sensibility. But that just flew right through the window of the command post. And wound up on a captains stomach, but unfortunately it did take another captains leg off in the meantime. Otherwise it would have just been kind of funny. The colonel was out of the building and he came back and he says, “Why didn’t somebody close the blankety blank window.” So anyway we made the breakthrough but not until we were bombed very heavily and we lost so many men. And the bombs came back and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The bombing was the most astounding thing I have ever been through. There were 2,000 bombs, a lot of them falling right on us, right on our area, and it was just you couldn’t see anything up. It was all just smoke, dust, dirt. And many of our guys were killed and wounded. 

Frankel: By American bombs?
CAPELL: By American bombs. And that also was covered up quite a bit by the services. And then as soon as the dust cleared a little bit I got up and went back to find out whether we were still going to attack. We were supposed to attack right after the bombing ended, right at 11:00, and the word was the attack was off. And the colonel was just going nuts back there I guess. He just didn’t know what to do. But he says we can’t attack we have too many losses. Then a little while later why word comes back, “Attack is on, we are going through.” And didn’t find out until later what had happened. One of the companies, B-Company of our regiment, didn’t get the word the attack was off and they went on ahead and once they went ahead the colonel decided we all got to go. So that’s how come we went forward and it was lucky because the Germans were badly shaken up too, and we actually advanced, I think it was less than a mile, but we did advance and it succeeded in starting the breakthrough. And I think it was the next day that Patton’s army came on through. And we held the flanks and they broke through and that was the big thrust into France. 

But that Sainte Lo July 25th bombing was one I will never forget. Now its very well documented by Ernie Pile who was happened to be with our regiment as a correspondent at that time. I am not sure exactly where he was but he must have been somewhere around regimental headquarters or near there. By the way, the bombing went so far back that it killed an American general, General McNair and also there were a couple of reporters or photographers that belonged to the associated press that were killed. But to go back far enough to kill a general, it was back at headquarters. That went pretty far back. So it was a terrible mistake. A friend here in Portland, Max Struts who was a bombardier on one of those planes, recalls exactly what happened. He tells about how they were ordered to bomb the smoke line. They didn’t find out until afterwards the smoke line was right over us. 

Frankel: And so after that breakthrough, how much farther did you go?
CAPELL: Well the breakthrough was made by Patton’s Army, mainly, and they made the big thrust. Then we moved over toward the area, I’ve forgotten the name of the town, but anyway the Germans had sent an army in to make a thrust in toward the coast and it was Falaise, near Falaise I think, but anyway it became known as the Falaise Gap or the Falaise Pocket. And the Canadians and the British were on the east side of the pocket and we were on the west side. And almost trapped an entire German army in that Falaise Pocket. However a lot of them did escape, they didn’t quite close the gap. So they got out of the Falaise Gap, but they lost an awful lot of men, the Germans did, on that thrust. Well that was the last major engagement that we had before Paris. Paris was not any problem either. But on the way to Paris then it was a matter of liberating one town after another. Almost every day we’d go liberate another town, chase the remaining Germans out. It was almost always a case that the French people were just so excited and so friendly and wine and kisses you know and everything all that sort of thing. But they’d also round up their collaborated and kill them, whichever ones had not escaped with the Germans. Many of them did. And then the girls who had had relations with the Germans they would cut their hair and send them out of town. So that haircutting party was something we’d go watch almost every night in a different town. 

Frankel: Were you given orders what to do with the Germans or with the French collaborators?
CAPELL: No. The French people took care of them. We had nothing to do with the collaborators. The French people knew who they were and most of them escaped with the German army; they went back. And that’s one of the things that this [Franz Von Rosensvag] that I was talking about early, they used him to interrogate collaborators. And even while he was in the camp, the Germans needed somebody that spoke French fluently and they would take him out of the camp once in a while and use him as a translator. That way he was able to smuggle some things into the camp. So he had it a little bit better than some of the prisoners. But they did interrogate these French that had escaped with the Germans. And if they didn’t escape why the French would see to it that they were killed. 

Frankel: So were you in Paris when Paris was liberated?
CAPELL: Yes, actually we then moved toward Paris. And we went and fought on the outskirts of Paris and then we fought into the city. This was toward the end of August. I believe it was the 25th or 26th that we were fighting around the edge of the city. We didn’t go into the center of the city but I understand one of our regiments did. The 8th Regiment did not. But this was a political arrangement. The Eisenhower or the general on command wanted the French to do the actual liberating. So it was kind of a sham type of thing. We did a lot of the fighting and I remember there was one account there that Bradley spoke of in his book I believe it was. He said that the French 2nd armored General [L’Clair] was coming up through but they were spending so much time partying along the way that he said, “If they don’t get here by the 26th I am sending the 4th Division in to actually take the city.” But anyway they wanted the French to come in and the French did finally get there. And I saw General [L’Clair] coming through and I believe I saw General de Gaulle. He came in the following day or later that same day. And I am not sure if it was [L’Clair] or de Gaulle that I saw but one of the high ranking officers in a command car not too far away. But with their uniform I couldn’t really tell the difference between the two of them so I don’t know which one it was I saw. But then we went to the eastern outskirts of Paris and then left the city and moved up further north. And we were not in contact with the Germans. But then we ran out of gas. We were moving so fast that they ran out of gas. The Germans were going back to set up another defensive line. Actually mainly by the Siegfried line, so we didn’t really encounter much resistance then until the Siegfried line. Then it was very tough resistance again. 

Frankel: By that time had you had any knowledge of what was going on of even the presence of the concentration camps or what was going on in those camps? Did you have any knowledge?
CAPELL: No. When we were on the landing craft there was a German Jew refugee who was an officer. And actually one of the men that came in with us was also a German Jew refugee. He’s the one that lost his nerve and panicked and ran. He had been born in Germany and was Jewish. But this officer gave us a briefing about what to do on D-Day. He said, “Any SS men,” and he said, “You will identify them by the insignia on their left sleeve rather than over the right breast pocket,” he said, “You kill them; you don’t take them prisoner.” And I thought that was strange. But he said they were too dangerous. I didn’t know very much about SS men at that time. But he said, “You can’t interrogate them. They are no use to capture and they are too dangerous to mess with; just kill them.” So that was something that I hadn’t expected, and order like that. And I wasn’t too anxious to do that. I decided, “Well, if a man is surrendering I will take him prisoner. If somebody wants to kill him, let somebody else do it.” But then I realized after I learned more that there was some wisdom in that order. That it probably wasn’t ever a good idea to take an SS man. But some of them did give up and were quite meek after we finally did capture them. But there were some that certainly were not. We had one that was carrying a boobytrap and we suspected him and we got it and took it out and blew it up with a rifle. But he lost his nerve. He didn’t blow it up as he was supposed to do. We had another incident, and I think this was SS too although at the time we weren’t sure whether we were fighting SS men or not because they would tend to not wear their SS uniforms. And you had good reason to believe they were SS but since they had their regular marked uniform on you really couldn’t tell. We were ambushed and one of the men got trapped and he escaped by getting under a French house and the Germans knew he was somewhere around the house and they thought he got in the house. And the French people were not evacuated from the house. So the German who went in the house and asked the French people where he was they didn’t know because they hadn’t seen him. They honestly did not know where he was. And the Germans killed every one of them. A man a wife and the children. 

Frankel: Did you witness that?
CAPELL: No but the man under the house did and he was in our company. He came back and told the story. So we began to realize what might be going on. So that was the first example of a real German atrocity that I knew of. But the concentration camp thing, no we really didn’t know. We weren’t really briefed on that very much. I think we should have been more than we were. 

Frankel: So after the liberation of Paris, where did you move on from there?
CAPELL: We went east a little bit and then up north toward a place called Saint Quentin and that’s about where we ran out of gas. Had to stay there for about four days and then gradually moved east toward the Belgian border and then over onto the – we fought near Bastogne and then Malmédy, in that area. And then finally got to the Siegfried line and spent the next, oh gosh, month or so I think fighting around the Siegfried line. We’d move in, then move back. Then move into another place. Then finally we were moved into the Hürtgen Forest. I’d have to look up the dates on that but it was in the fall. And the Hürtgen Forest is about 12 miles or so south of Aachen. You could look on a map and see exactly, but the little village of Hürtgen right in the center of it. There’s very little in there but it’s very rugged country. It’s forested and steep ravines and very difficult area to fight in. there was a river, the Aur River, just to the east of that and there were some dams on the river. And the Americans were trying to capture those dams because they knew the German’s could release the water and flood the whole area downstream and make it very difficult to cross that area. 

And instead of going around the Hürtgen Forest, which would have obviously have been the wise thing to do now that we know what all happened, why they just continued to try to go right through the center of the forest. And there was divisions. One division after another. I know the 1st Division was in there, and then we went in there, and it just depleted the divisions. They would go in there and they would fight until they were so depleted they would have to pull out. And we were one of the last ones in there but then we became so depleted. But we did get across the forest but it was just a great loss of manpower for now good reason because it was very easily defended and very difficult to attack. And the big problem there was being a forest like that, the German shelling was intense and the shells would burst in the trees, scatter the shrapnel downward and you just had nowhere to go, you had no protection. We had to build log structures. And when you are moving almost every day that means you got to cut a new tree every day and cut it up into lengths. We picked up cross cut saws from farms houses and so on and had them in our vehicles. So we would pass the cross cut saws around the company so we could cut up our tree and make a little shelter. We would just stack the logs up so you could get underneath there and protect yourself from the shrapnel. Because it didn’t do you any good to dig a hole because the shrapnel was coming downward. So that was a very tough battle and it probably was, I think Normandy was probably the toughest fighting that I encountered. In the Hürtgen Forest though our casualties were almost as many as they were in Normandy. Some 6- or 7,000 lost and our companies were down to a third strength and so on. So they had to pull us out of combat and then move us down to Luxembourg and then after being a veteran of all the fighting I had why I was one who was selected to go back to a hospital camp for a couple of days rest. 

So after a few days in Luxembourg, not in Luxembourg city but in the town called Senningen where our command post was, which is just north/northeast from Luxembourg city. I was sent back to Arlon, Belgium with about 10 other guys and we were to have two days back there to have a shower and a bunk to sleep in and it was just a paradise there. But it only lasted for a little over a day before we got the word to go back to the line again. So we were put back on this two and half ton truck and shipped back up the line. Well the weather was very cold that day and the date happened to be December 16th 1944 and we were really beefing about, just complaining like everything about being promised two days back there, being brought back after just a day you know, boy we were mad. And besides that the weather was cold and you sitting in the back of the two and a half ton truck driving through there and you’re just freezing it was so cold I could hardly stand it. And then we stopped to refuel and the guys in there had a radio. And here we are listening to this radio, probably the BBC, saying about the attack and how the 4th Division had been annihilated. And, my gosh, we were all from the 4th Division. So right away we went to the driver and said, “Why are you taking us back, where are you taking us?” He said I don’t know I just got my orders. After that I wasn’t cold anymore, no more complaining. We were wondering what the heck is going on after that report. So we went back up there and we found our company had moved back some but they were not annihilated by any means. However one of our companies in one of the other regiments in the 4th Division was completely wiped out. And our casualties overall in the division were not big but we did have some. And we had lost very little ground. 

Well that was the Battle of the Bulge. That was the German offensive and it took place on December 16th and that was the day I was in Arlon, Belgium and that’s the day they rushed us back to the line. Then of course the big problem was the heavy fighting for a few days. We were being shelled for heavily because the Germans had an awful lot of tanks and artillery and everything in there. And then it finally the tide turned in the Battle of the Bulge and we began to try to regain the ground that had been lost because everything to the north of us had been swept through by the Germans, everything. Everything to the north and quite a bit to the northwest. We had held in our sector, we were the south shoulder of the bulge, the only division that held that was actually directly attacked. The Germans had this Trojan Horse battalion, which they had developed. They were Germans who had lived in the United States or England and they briefed them on the latest slang and everything and they had them all checked out and they put them in American uniforms, American vehicles and they sent them over in amongst us. And we did have some of them that got into our regimental headquarters and got away with the information they wanted and nobody suspected them until after it was too late. 

Well anyway this all went on during that Battle of the Bulge and then the weather turned, had already turned cold, and it was snow and ice and it was miserably cold. There was just no way that you could keep warm it seemed like. You couldn’t dig a foxhole because the ground is frozen. Trying everything you can to keep warm during the night. I even slept on manure piles because they generated heat and as long as I could stand the gas and then another night I slept next to a cow to keep warm. But it was anything to keep warm. There I was put on a little easier of a job, I wasn’t a wireman anymore. I was assigned to drive a weapons carrier – three-quarter-ton weapons carrier, three-quarter-ton Dodge – and my main job was to get water for the company, get supplies. And also haul the officers supply trailer around whenever we moved. And then I was sent out on a lot of different missions on various things so it was kind of dangerous in the fact that I was out alone and going over sometimes into enemy territory. It happened to me a number of times but it wasn’t as bad as being a wireman. So I had a little bit of an easier time there. So mainly it was not the enemy action so much as the weather. And then we had a spell where we got a thaw. That was later on in January. And during all this period there had been snow on the ground, quite deep and big drifts. And the dead were not picked up during that time because they couldn’t find them; they were in those drifts. And of course you didn’t even dig a hole for a latrine. It was just right in the snow. So all this filth was on the battlefield. First the Germans were there, then we were there, and then the Germans were there. It was just back and forth. And then the thaw came; well, our water came out of the stream. And so most of the guys had sense enough not to drink it but I didn’t. I drank some and I got dysentery so bad and then the weather got cold again. I don’t think I was ever more miserable than those few days when I was so sick. I couldn’t eat. And well when you have dysentery and it’s a blizzard why what are you going to do? I mean it was awful. Then after the Battle of the Bulge we moved up north near Aachen again and then they moved us down into the [name] and that was more of a rest period before we were to cross the Rhine. Just to get replacements, get our division back to full strength and then cross the Rhine and start thrusting right into the heart of Germany. 

Frankel: What was it like in Germany? What did you witness?
CAPELL: Well it seemed like once we got across the Rhine that resistance was not all that much and we kept thinking that the war was about over. But it really wasn’t. I had a couple of times that I very nearly, after getting through all of those narrow escapes all through the earlier part of the war, I didn’t have any idea I was going to get into some more situations like that so late in the war. But I accidentally was out on a mission and an officer gave me the wrong directions – I was to go get water for the company – to the water point and sent me right into [Burtzberg] before the Americans had taken it. And I realized I had crossed out of the American lines, was in German territory. After you don’t see the white flags hanging out anymore you know you are in Germany territory. So it was a narrow street in the town and you didn’t have room really to turn around without stopping and I didn’t dare stop because they were firing at me so I just kept going as fast as I could getting farther into the city and staying just ahead of the firing because by the time they’d see what was going on they would be almost too late. And I was hoping for a street that would let me circle back and I saw a street coming in, turned around sharply on that street, raced back down that street and ran right smack into some American tanks. And the American tank, well they were kind of over to the side, but I could see that they were tanks and as soon I came there they thought I was a German coming from the German lines like that. So they stopped me even though I was in an American jeep so this tank commander he interrogated me pretty thoroughly to make sure I was an American. And then he says, “Now just tell me where in the hell you’ve been if you’re an American. What are you doing up here on the German side?” And I said well I told him how I accidentally got in there and what I did to try to get out. And so I was able to tell them what was up there because I had a good chance to look at it. So he said, “Well that’s going to help us a lot we know what’s there now.” But he says, “If you want to know we’ve been fighting for that street all day long.” And he said, “Now I think we will move up from what you’ve told us.” So I went back on out of the city and found the water point and never even told the officer where he sent me. But those things did happen. 

We got raided one night in Ochsenfurt, Germany, that’s not far from Schweinfurt. And it happened, we went into a bank building in the center of town thinking that the resistance is so small we have nothing to worry about, sleep indoors tonight. So I went into the bank building there and I laid my blanket down up on the second floor up there on the linoleum, over the concrete floor, and boy a nice flat place to sleep. And so then we went down and somebody had found a big cache of champagne and I figured nothing to worry about so I drank too much champagne and I went back up and laid on my blanket and I think I went out immediately. And during that night, within a couple of hours after I laid down, the German paratroopers came in and raided and came right in the building. The other guys got out of the building and I was still out. And they came right in the same room I was and then the firing started taking place and stuff started flying around the room and I thought, “What’s going on?” And if I hadn’t been out so soundly I probably would have lost my life. Because the German that was in the same room I was – they said he was because he was firing on the guys down in the street – he would have killed me. But that’s what saved me; he thought I was dead. He thought I was out and he left me and he was too busy trying to fight off the ones on the street. Well I ran out of the building and they couldn’t believe I had been in the building all that time. And one of my best friends was dead. And the rest of them were in a stairwell there making sure that there’s no more Germans that they’d left. And it was just a quick raid and they went out and so the next night we expected they’d be back so we had outposts very securely guarding around the town. 

And one spot where the Germans had gone, that was in a valley, and I was put on a machine gun overlooking that valley. And we were alone on that, myself and another man. Now you need two on a machine gun like that because if you only have one, someone can get in under your flank or throw a grenade on you or something like that. You needed a rifleman there to scout your flank for you and its very important because this is what happened to my other friend that had been killed. That’s the one that was laying in the street that came out of the building. And the one that was with him hid left, he had gone and hidden in a basement when the Germans came and I wasn’t going to have that happen to me so when this guy that was with me made some remark about not sticking around if the Germans came up the hill, I pulled my pistol right away and shoved it right in his head and I said, “You won’t get very far because I’ll have you first.” And I liked the guy too. He immediately came right around and straightened up and says, “I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you.” And I just thought well what if he had. Phew, I’d have hated to have shot him. But I felt like I would. 

So that was the last action we had in the war and then we continued to move on east from Nuremberg and south somewhere near Augsburg and then went over west toward Munich and that’s when we passed Dachau. And now the 42nd Division had actually been the first to go into Dachau and we were immediately on their right side and apparently our job, which I wasn’t told ahead of time but was told when we got there, we were supposed to clear Germans out of the town of Dachau and secure that and around that area. And we were really not supposed to go in the camp. Leave that up to special units that were going to come in with medical supplies and the proper procedure for freeing the camp. But the first thing I saw when I got there, the first thing I remember seeing – and I am sure that I remember this correctly too – was gondola cars. And I stopped. I was driving this three-quarter-ton truck, our weapons carrier, which I always did at that time after I was taken out of the wire section. I climbed up next to the car and I looked in and it was all full of naked bodies. But then they yelled at me right away, “Come on now; We gotta move.” Oh no, that wasn’t it, they said, “Look up ahead here; there’s some box cars up here. We gotta check these out.” And that’s where there were either 40 or 41 boxcars that were full of dead. These were not naked. Some of them were pretty much so but most of them had the striped suits on. And it looked like the cars had just been opened up and that’s what I understand they were. But I didn’t know why these people were dead in there and why they were like that. Apparently they had been locked in the boxcars and died in them, I don’t know. 

But that was the – oh there were hundreds, and I do have some photographs of that. I still was thinking that they were more political prisoners, not there because because of race. I still had that idea. They were just people who had gotten in trouble with the Nazis, probably got in some kind of resistance movement or something like that. I didn’t realize what the SS, what the Nazis had done. Then some of us went over the fence into the camp and mainly what I saw in there were inmates that were still in the camp and they were nearly all wearing striped suits. I didn’t actually at that time see the ovens or the stacks of bodies that were near the ovens, which were there all right, because some of our fellows saw it, but I didn’t see that. All I saw really was the boxcars and the inmates that were still left there. But there were a number of them that had gotten out of the camp. And I don’t know whether they had escaped while the 42nd Division was taking the camp or not, I don’t know. But the signs of the Germans, some dead Germans… there was a wall there that they’d lined these Germans up against and killed them. Now whether they were the original guards there or not it’s hard to say. I always suspected that they were ones the Germans had pushed in there while they escaped, I mean while the SS men escaped. They probably shoved some third-rate troops in there but I don’t know. But they did kill all that they found. 42nd Division did that. 

And then I was told to keep on moving after I did get a chance to investigate the boxcars. We did spend some time there all right so I had a good chance to look to see just what they were all about and couldn’t believe that one after the other after the other were all full of bodies like that. It was a real revelation. I mean, I had no idea. It just really hit me. I began to realize what this was all about, such mass killing. But I still didn’t really put together the fact that they were not political prisoners. So then we got over to the town of Dachau, or on the outskirts of it, and we were told that we were going to get hot chow. Kitchen truck was coming up. So I went over to that and got my mess kit lid – that’s all I carried anymore because we throw away half the kit so you wouldn’t have to carry it – I just had that mess kit lid and I got it filled up with food, nice hot food. And I noticed there were some inmates that were over in the forested area near there but I didn’t pay much attention to them. I went down and sat by a tree and was getting ready to eat and then this child walks up to me, he’s probably oh maybe anywhere between eight and 11 years old, he could have been older or younger because he was so emaciated that it was hard to tell how old he was. But he had the striped suit on and he just came up to me and stood there and stared at me. And he didn’t talk, he didn’t smile, he didn’t ask for anything. So I gave him my food. And he didn’t know whether he wanted to take it at first. And then he took it and he just looked at it. And then he slowly turned and walked away without saying a word. And I was just really… I mean that really had an emotional impact on me. And that’s when I realized that they weren’t just political prisoners. Because how could a child be a political prisoner? And then after that more children came and they were picking the garbage cans and then of course as soon as our fellows saw that they immediately came over and gave them food. But boy that one kid, to me that really had an effect. I will never forget it. 

Frankel: Did you then talk to others to find out what the camp was about, who the prisoners were?
CAPELL: No, because I didn’t speak German. So I didn’t actually talk to inmates, and anyway we then were ordered on to move farther on south. And so I didn’t stay around long enough to have anymore intercourse with, in fact I didn’t have any with the prisoners. And I was still puzzled by it all, a little overwhelmed. I mean I just could hardly believe what I had seen you know. And we got down to this town of Gauting which is about six miles southwest of Munich, just approximately there. And it was a beautiful little town. And it was not destroyed. Munich was absolutely devastated. But this town was hardly touched by the war, if at all. And the Bavarian Alps were surrounding, it was a nice sunny and it was a beautiful location. And here I am thinking, you know what I have just seen, and then here is this little beautiful town inside of the Alps. So I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten and I didn’t pick up any rations because I thought I was getting kitchen chow. So it was I believe the next day but it could have been later on that same day, but I think it was the next morning. Well one of the fellows in our company had a two and a half ton communications truck and he was driving that and he stopped and said, “Come on back to Dachau camp,” he says, “I gotta go pick up some German civilians, load up the truck with German civilians and we are going to take them to the camp.” And I had already been assigned to go get water for the company and I said, “Oh if I do that and I gotta go get water for the company I will miss chow, and I am too hungry.” And boy to this day I regret that. I wish I had gone back. Because there was this opportunity, I could have gone back with these German civilians and seen their reaction to seeing the camp. I also would have got a thorougher tour of the camp, which I thought I’d seen all there was to see. I thought I had seen enough from what I saw. But I did not see it. I did not see what the barracks were really like inside and I did not see the ovens. I just really wish I had gone. And then I’d liked to have seen what the reaction of the German civilians. 

Frankel: Was that an order he had received to take those Germans?
CAPELL: Yes it was. I don’t know who gave the order, but probably our company commander gave it to him. But yes he was giving them tours and I imagine he took more than just one group back. I imagine they tried to get as many back as they could. But I just really regret that. Well then I had a different feeling about it all then after that because I had been quite humane to the Germans and had a feeling like they are just soldiers like us but then I began to realize that some of them were not…that they had no idea that there was that kind of unbelievable inhumanity occurring. We saw many what we called displaced persons, DPs that were mainly used in labor camps. And a lot of them were just simply assigned to different families, just given to families to use on their farms or whatever. 

And we moved up to I believe it was after Regensburg, that’s where we were when the war ended. Then we moved up to Bamberg or somewhere in that area there. We were in a town and I had this weapons carrier – they were using me for all different things – one of the things I did was go pick up garbage from the officers mess, they had their own little kitchen that went around wherever we went. There were about five of them, of the higher-ranking officers, that they had a cook and they had the kitchen. So I would haul the garbage and take it out to the dump and they had some girls there. And they were pretty attractive girls and so I got acquainted with a couple of them. One in particular, the one girl was Russian, from Odessa. The other girl was Polish. That’s the one I became somewhat acquainted with because she took a liking to me because I would come back and get the garbage. And she told this fellow in our company that was Polish, she says tell him that I would like to make little garbage men with him. So anyway her story was that she had been taken from her family when she was quite young in Poland and had lived with a German family. Well one day I was taking the garbage out, we were only there for about three days, but one of the days anyway I was taking the garbage back she jumped in the truck with me and of course we could barely communicate because I didn’t speak her language and she didn’t speak mine. We did manage to communicate enough that I knew what she was talking about and she wanted to go with me and she wanted to see her German family. So I agreed that I would let her see them if she wouldn’t stay. If she would just see them and come right back because I didn’t want to get in trouble. So I took her to see her German family and boy they had a reunion like it was their daughter, long lost daughter. She stayed too long, I mean she stayed more than just a couple of minutes like I had said so I just hauled her back into the weapons truck. I had to pulled her away. That was the only family she knew. Well she had been part of this, I think they called it the [name] program, where she had been taken from her parents when she was quite young. And she was blond, blue-eyed, good looking and so they were going to make a German out of her. And they gave her to this Nazi family. So I had a chance to see them how they took a child away from its parents and turned it into an Aryan German. 

Frankel: After your experience in Dachau, did you speak to your friends, buddies about it?
CAPELL: Oh yes. We all had very strong feelings about it. Yes, very definitely. Everybody was emotionally shaken by seeing that and none of us expected it as we saw it. 

Frankel: What about your officers? Were they able to explain to you what that was, what kind of camp it was?
CAPELL: We didn’t have that much communication with our officers. I was an enlisted man and there was a big difference between enlisted men and officers and they just didn’t talk to you and we were never briefed or told what it was all about. Nearly everything I have learned about it has been since then. Not at the time. I was very much in the dark about what it was all about. I didn’t know how many camps there were, I didn’t know really what their purpose was. I didn’t know, as I know now, if it was mainly a labor camp. But they had deaths mainly from disease, malnutrition, and overwork and so on and they would kill those that couldn’t keep on working. But it wasn’t an extermination camp like Auschwitz. But I’ve really learned that since then. I wasn’t aware of all that then, no.

Frankel: Did you used to write home? Did you write letters?
CAPELL: Yes I wrote very regularly and I still have those letters I wrote. Everything was saved that got home. But there was a period after the Battle of the Bulge broke out where letters did not come through. And unfortunately that was right around the time when my dad was dying when it would have been the best time for a letter to come through and they didn’t get any word from me for about three weeks. And I am sure the mail didn’t get through at that time partly because we were surrounded at one time and we had our supplies dropped by parachute. Now that was right shortly after the Bulge broke out and for a few days there we were cut off and that’s why they moved us into the 3rd Army and took us out of the 1st Army because we were cut off completely from the 1st Army. Well it was snowing during that time and it was very cold and of course it was very hard to write and we only had just eight hours of daylight at the most at that time of the year. And then we were busy all the time during the daylight hours so it was very very difficult to write a letter. But I did get some off. I am sure I got more off than what arrived. But I read those, I still have them and I have read them all over. However, I gave very little information about any of my experience or where I was because I knew how severely everything was censored. So I didn’t even talk about anything. Nothing of consequence. 

Frankel: How about that Dachau experience? Did you write back about it?
CAPELL: No, I didn’t even then because I was just out of the habit of writing anything about anything. And I didn’t find anything about that or even mention the fact I was there in my letter. You see, normally the pattern would be if you mention the name of a town or a location it was immediately just clipped right out of your letter so I just made up my mind I wouldn’t. And even though that was right at the end of the war it might not have been censored at that time but it probably would have been. 

Frankel: How soon after that did you go back home? Did anything else happen?
CAPELL: Yes, we went up to near Bamberg for about a month and I was still mainly driving that weapons carrier. And I was still hauling garbage, not only from the officers mess but from our own kitchen because we were getting kitchen mess at that time. And I had to take this out to where they had big holes dug but there was nobody there to keep the Germans from that. So I’d get out there alone with that weapons carrier and the garbage in the back of it and I wouldn’t get the truck stopped before the Germans would overwhelm it. Well I got very tough; I struck them and knocked them off the truck. I punched them. I just fought them right off the truck and I felt terrible about hitting hungry people like that but nevertheless it was the only way I could keep any kind of order there at all because it was just chaos. So then I got them at bay somewhat, and then I would, there was no way they all had, not all, but most of them had little containers or hats or something to put the swill in you know. And they were fighting so much among themselves that I just dumped it. It was terrible but I just had to dump it right on them. I tried to put it in the containers as much as I could but it was no use because you just had to dump it. And that scene of hunger there went on for, oh, I would say more than a week that. We were in that one spot and each time I would go out to the dump there I’d know what I was going to face and I would get my rifle up there all ready to fire it if they got too close. I wouldn’t shoot them but I would shoot in the air. 

Frankel: Those were German civilians?
CAPELL: They were German civilians, yes. In the meantime the roads were jammed with displaced persons. And some of them got together and formed roving gangs and they started raiding the Germans homes. And some of them became rather wealthy from stealing from the Germans. And that was a problem too that had to be overcome somehow. But they got enough money that they – you see we were issued cigarettes all through. We never lacked cigarettes. We lacked food lots of times, lacked ammunition at times, but never cigarettes. Seemed like they kept supplied with those. I suppose the tobacco companies wanted to make sure everybody was smoking. But these people would pay as much as $40 a carton. Now at that time that was a lot of money. That’s how rich some of these bands were. But we don’t know really who they were. Word was they were mostly Polish people. They were just displaced persons. And I don’t know how many of those might have come out of concentration camps but I didn’t see very many of them with stripped suits on, although there were some. But it was a chaotic scene between the hunger, among the Germans themselves and these roving bands and all the refugees. It was a terrible mess over there but we didn’t stay very long. Maybe a month until we got our orders to ship back to go to the French coast. 

I was left behind. There were four of us who were left behind because we had settled in a field near Bamberg, Germany and we had these big garbage pits that were dug. At that time they dug big pits right there right near the kitchen. And about every company had a big pit for their mess kitchen and we were supposed to keep the Germans from getting in there and digging them up. Because they were worried about widespread disease and so on from digging up that swill. Well it was no use. We would chase them off one hole and by the time we go to another hole it was dug up. And we just finally gave up. We stayed there for a couple days and every hole was dug up, we couldn’t stop it. So then we traveled alone, the four of us did, separated, until we caught up with the company over in Metz, France. But then we came back to, well eventually I wound up near [Swalson] and Le Havre, France in an American camp there. Camp Old Gold, which was an embarkation for troops going back. And we left Le Havre on July 2nd 1945 for New York. 

Frankel: Were you discharged then?
CAPELL: No actually the war in Japan was still going. Our division was slated to go to Japan and invade the mainland. I saw the invasion plan and we were to be spearheading on the mainland of Japan itself. That is the mainland or whichever island Tokyo is on, I’ve forgotten now. We were to go in thrust toward Tokyo. And that would have been like another D-Day there and I did not know at the time but I would not have gone because I had too many points. They give you points for the number of months in service and a little bit about what you did and medals and so on and time over seas and so on. I had too many points so I would not have been sent but I did not know that at the time. So when we came back to New York we went to Camp Kilmer for maybe a day or two and then given 30 day furloughs. That was the first furlough I had had since I had been in the army. We had 30 days to go home. And then while I was home, that was in the summer of 1945, the war in Japan ended. I thought all I was going to do was go to Fort Lewis and get discharged because I had way over the number of points you needed to get out of the army and the war was over in Japan so there was no point in keeping the army. And I got to Fort Lewis after my 30 days was up and found out they were shipping me somewhere else. And I wound up being shipped all the way across the country. Didn’t know where we were going but wound up in North Carolina. Stayed there until the middle of October and then got my discharge at that time. But I suppose….