Leonard Carroll Farr

Harper: Thanks for being here. 
FARR: Call me Len, please. 

Harper: If we can begin, please, with you telling us your name, date, and place of birth.
FARR: I was born Leonard Carroll [he spells it] – unusual spelling – Farr, at Coquille, Oregon. October 16, 1921. 

Harper: Where is your family originally from?
FARR: On both sides, my family was from the British Isles, and as far as I know from the main island. That is, I know that we have Scotch ancestry, English ancestry, and I have a suspicion there might be some Welsh. But so far as I know there’s no Irish. I let my wife have the Irish blood. 

Harper: Do you have any idea when your family came to this country?
FARR: 1813. My paternal ancestors came from Manchester England. They were Methodist missionaries and they came to eastern Tennessee. I am not aware of the time of the crossing of my mother’s side. 

Harper: Can you tell me a little bit about your family life growing up? Maybe what your parents did for a living, what your household was like, things like that?
FARR: First of all my mother was a farm girl. The two of them, mother and dad, lived in the same neighborhood really. They were, you could say, neighbors in eastern Washington; near Pullman, Washington. My mother’s family was on a rented farm; my father’s family on one that they owned. It was a farm that was homesteaded by my grandfather who was a graduate of St. Louis College in Missouri. He has a certificate which my father obtained and which I now hold. It says that he was an intelligent and competent accountant. It’s the only proof that the Farr family is intelligent [laughs] so I hang on to that. I like it. 

My mother went through the eighth grade and then taught school. She was a schoolteacher in a school in Albion, Washington, which was the village closest to their farms. And my father went on to high school and to Washington State University. It was called Washington State College at that time. He graduated in agriculture in 1913, having been on a wheat ranch all his life. And then they were married after his graduation. They had been sweethearts. As far as I know it was the only sweetheart either one of them had. And they went to central Washington. He as a farm machine re-salesman and he sold tractors and farm machinery. He tired of that and went to teaching school. And they wound up in Colfax, Washington. 

It was there that they became aware of an opportunity in Coos County, Oregon, where I was born and now live. He was the second county agent for Coos County. So he came to Coos County in 1919. After two years of being county agent he decided he wanted to get out of the government employment so he bought out a small business – a feed and seed and farm supply business in Coquille. The railroad had come to Coquille in 1919 and the business sat in an old warehouse building, which was called the Collier Warehouse. It was between the railroad station and the riverboat wharf. At that time the only transportation was by rail or by boat. The roads were not very good. So he operated this business beginning in 1921, the year in which I was born, and he had bought out a man by the name of Cecil Elwood. 

Mr. Elwood went to his farm and farmed for two years. Their business, by the way, was transferring freight from the railhead to the riverboats. That was their primary business. Mr. Elwood came back in 1923 and said “Chet” – my father’s name was Chester Carroll Farr – “Chet, I’d like to get back into business. How about becoming your partner?” So in 1923 Mr. Elwood came back into the business and it became Farr and Elwood. They incorporated, which in 1925 they gave up and were from then on only partners, regular partners. And proceeded to expand their business. 

They moved up closer to town, off the railhead, and about 1926 or ’27 the highways began to be built in Coos County. There was a road graveled from Coquille, Oregon to Roseburg. And then of course there were good roads from there into Portland. So they obtained the first public utility commission license for trucking and they became a transfer company in addition to being feed, seed, and farm supplies. This went on for a number of years, and about 1936 they sold their PUC license to Consolidated Freightways, and that is how Consolidated came to Coos County.

In the meantime they had developed transportation to then Marshfield, now Coos Bay, Oregon and also were hauling to Roseburg and then up to Portland. So they had an intrastate truck line. It prospered. ‘Course then the depression came along. In that year, the fateful year of ’26, they decided to expand to Marshfield and so they built a building on South First Street in Marshfield, later known as Coos Bay, and we are still on that property. We have two stores. We have a store in Coquille and one in Coos Bay. The store in Coquille was moved, in 1936, up more to the middle of town and on Highway 42, which went from Coos Bay to Myrtle Point, and then over to Roseburg. Highway 101 goes up and down the coast. The location of the building in Coos Bay was – and I am going to call it Coos Bay from now on even though it didn’t become that until, what Joyce, 1944? The name was changed from Marshfield to Coos Bay. 

At that time they built a building out of used materials, which we occupied until 1979 when we built a new building on the same property. I had expanded the holdings of the property from the time that I came back from World War II in 1946 until 1979 and we built a new building, tore the old building down. It was a rather interesting old building. It had 5,000 feet with an addition of 2,500 feet off to the northeast and was built on the rail spur of Southern Pacific in Coos Bay. What they were doing primarily was shipping in feed, hay, cement, and later presto logs. And one time we shipped in a full carload of stove pipe when we became a hardware store. That was after I came back. And we operated there in that building. 

Now the building in Coquille was the old Ford garage in 1936 and they bought that 100 x 100 building, 10,000 square feet. I remember they paid $10,000 for it – that was a lot of money. Three years ago we remodeled that building and spent over $200,000 just remodeling it [chuckles] but that’s the story of inflation. The business in 1936, when they moved, joined a cooperative here in Portland, Oregon called Northern Wholesale Hardware. It was a distribution organization that dealt in wholesale hardware and related merchandise. It’s a cooperative. My father later became a director of Northern Wholesale Hardware with our two stores and subsequent to his being a director of Northern Wholesale Hardware, I became a director of Northern Wholesale Hardware. As a matter of fact was the catalyst for moving Northern Wholesale Hardware here in Portland into the True Value family. So we are now in 1994. Since 1970 when we joined the two companies together – actually they took us over, they’re much bigger than we were – and we have been a True Value Hardware ever since. 

So I have spent, coming back in 1946 from Europe and World War II, spent my entire adult career as a hardware merchant. Retail hardware. And my brother who was older than I by seven years operated the Coquille store and I operated the Coos Bay store. We operated as partners until 1975 when we took in the third generation of our family who are now running our business and daily operations. Our son and three of the children of my brother. They are now operating the business and the fourth generation is working in it in Coos Bay! So you can see, I have given you more detail than you probably wanted, but you can see that we are truly a family business. 

Mr. Elwood was killed, I should mention, in an automobile accident near Gresham. He and his wife were both killed in the same accident, a head-on collision. Lady came across the road and hit them head on in 1941. From that time on Mr. Elwood’s two children were not interested in joining the business. He had a son who was in the Coast Guard at the time and a daughter who was the same class as I at the University of Oregon and neither one of them was interested in joining the business. My father offered them the opportunity but they declined. So since 1941 the business has been in the Farr family only. 

Harper: Would you say your family was middle class or upper middle class?
FARR: Oh definitely middle class. We have never considered ourselves upper middle class, no [laughing]. 

Harper: What did that mean, being middle class when you were growing up?
FARR: Well we had probably no one in the town of Coquille that I would call upper middle class. There were people who had more money than other people, who lived better, who had better clothes and fancier cars and so forth. And if you want to call them upper middle class, ok, but certainly we were always – and consider ourselves today to be – middle class. We’re white collar I suppose [chuckling]. 

Harper: Did you live in a neighborhood or out?
FARR: I was born in the house at 751 West Fourth Street, in Coquille. I was born in that home. Doctor delivered my mother at that house. House is no longer in existence because it became ratty from having been turned into an apartment house in the 1940’s – late ‘40’s and 50’s – and was later destroyed. But we lived in a neighborhood that was wonderful for me. We had an acre and a quarter of land. There were three of us children, my brother older and my sister who was five years older than I. I said my brother was seven years older. He passed away two years ago and my sister is still alive living in Johnson City, Tennessee. Retired, living in a retirement home. 

I lived there all through school up through high school. Graduate of Coquille High School, class of 1939. The Coquille Red Devils. Then I went in the fall of 1939 to the University of Oregon in Eugene and entered the business school. One of the reasons I entered the business school I suppose was that we had come through the Depression and there weren’t too many people my age who attended college. I felt fortunate to be able to do it. My father gave me unlimited employment and paid me a going wage. As a matter of fact I started when I was 12 years old, sweeping the floor and packaging feed and that sort of thing. So I have never really done anything else but work in that business. I went to the business school and was interrupted in 1942 – I was class of ’43, but I didn’t stay in school at that time. I later came back and graduated after the war. But I was an interruptee by World War II. I had finished three years. 

Harper: Before we…
FARR: I am probably digressing here, so you bring me back [laughing].

Harper: No, no, no, it’s fine. Just before you start talking about those later years, I want to wrap some things up here. Did you know any Jewish people in your town? Were there any? Did your family know any Jewish people?
FARR: The only Jewish people I knew were in Coos Bay and as a youngster we dealt regularly with a Jewish business in Marshfield at that time called the Bargain House, the Marshfield Bargain House. Its still on North Broadway. I think it is called Bay Shore now, in Coos Bay. And they also are a family business. [faint woman’s voice in background]. My wife has just reminded me that yes, I did know a Jewish family – and I will return to the Bargain House, but let me fill in. 

When I was approximately seven or eight years old, I became aware of a family that moved in – he was Jewish and she was English – and they owned a furniture store in Coquille, Oregon. It was the Unsoeld Furniture Store. They had a son who was about three years I think younger than I. His name was Bill, William. William Unsoeld. Now that may ring a bell with you. He became known later as Willy, Willy Unsoeld. Bill, his mother called him Billy, and I will tell you a little bit about him because he is an interesting person. He and I, being the youngest members of each of our families took over the family tradition of the Unsoeld and Farr family of camping every summer between 4th of July and Labor Day at Floris Crick, in Curry County, which was about 40 miles south of Coquille. We camped on the Russell Ranch there. He and I spent many joyous kid days on the crick in a swimming hole that we had there. A rock that you dive off of and all that sort of thing. So Bill and I sort of grew up together even though there was a disparity in our ages really. 

Well, we always kept in touch with the Unsoeld family because my brother had kids in the Unsoeld family his age, my sister had a girl in the family that was her age and so the families were always very good friends and very compatible. They moved to Eugene before World War II. Now getting back to Bill. Bill became a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion and taught at Oregon State University. Became very interested in mountain climbing and was a member of the first team to climb Everest by the West Route. He of course gained a lot of fame from that. Unfortunately about 10 years ago he was killed on Mr. Rainier in an avalanche. He was at that time teaching at Evergreen College in Washington and he enjoyed mountain climbing so much. He and Jolene, his wife, were great outdoors people. He led classes of students on Mr. Rainier in various mountaineering skills. And they were on the mountain practicing the skill of the avoidance of avalanches and an avalanche got them. Of course there were I think one other student that was killed along with Bill. Willy, he was known. 

Now getting back to the family in – you want me to pursue the family in Marshfield? They are interesting because they interacted with us. At the time that I was a youngster and during the Depression days, and shortly after that, they were primarily in the junk business. Metal junk, and also bought cascara bark, commonly called chitum bark, which was used for laxatives, and wool and hides. And during my childhood days, in order to supplement the feed and seed business, we bought those items and then they came over with their truck and hauled them to Coos Bay for resale. So we were more or less agents for them in that business. The families always, all of these families very congenial, and there was never any talk about “you’re a Jew and I’m a gentile, or you’re Jewish and I’m Christian” or anything like that. There was never any problem. At that time there were very few families even in Marshfield. I am sure that George Unsold was the only Jew in Coquille. I wouldn’t swear to it, but to my knowledge. But Coos Bay at that time had three families – the Gold family, the Rubinstein family, and the present family running the business is called Schneiderman. But they got that way because of one of the Rubinstein girls I think marrying a Schneiderman, so that’s how that name got in. But the Gold’s, the Schneiderman’s, and the Rosencrantz family were the only Jewish families so far as I know in Coos Bay at that time.  

Harper: Was your family involved in politics or were they concerned with politics at all?
FARR: Our family was not politically oriented. I did not grow up with a real knowledge about politics. One of the only recollections that I really have about involvement in politics was that my father had a Hoover and Garner picture, one of each, on the wall at the store. And I look back on that now, and that was before the election that they lost to Mr. Roosevelt, that would be 1932. And I look back now on those pictures and shudder because we allow no political signs at all on our business property. Because of course it must have been quite divisive. I was not aware of that at that time – I would have been 11 years old. 

Harper: What religion were you raised and was religion important to you as a child, and your family?
FARR: Extremely important to me as a child. I think you could say I was reared in a Protestant family. My parents and I, our whole family, were members of the Disciples of Christ, called commonly Christian Church. Our church was First Christian Church of Coquille. I was baptized when I was nine years old in that church, and by that I mean full immersion. I can never remember when my father wasn’t an elder in the church and periodically I suppose chairman of the board. My mother always was president of the missionary society in the church. She was also president of the Coos County WCTU – Women’s Christian Temperance Union – so she was very active in that effort of course. 

I remember the days during the prohibition. She wasn’t a Carry Nation, she didn’t get out on the streets and carry placards or anything like that but they had quite an organization. But both of my parents’ principle concern other than my father’s concern about the business, certainly I think the family came first with both of them, but those three things were really their total interest. Was the family, the church, and the business. I attended Sunday school and church, both morning and evening as far back as I can remember. I used to sit on the piano bench; my mother was a pianist at church. I used to sit beside her because I was a mamma’s boy. Later on I sang in the choir and all that sort of thing. So I was very steeped in fundamentalism. 

Harper: Do you remember first hearing about the Nazis or Hitler? Or any European political situation?
FARR: I think always, from high school days, I read the paper to a certain extent. However, I was aware of Hitler, I couldn’t date it, perhaps from 1936 or ’37 along when I was 15, 16 years old. And certainly I was very conscious of the invasion of Poland, which made big news. I remember that, the newspaper articles and pictures. And I remember, later, when Hitler started his air raids and that sort of thing against Britain. We at that time, as a nation, tried to maintain neutrality until Pearl Harbor. I mean, other people do a better manifestation of history than I do so I wouldn’t attempt to do that. But certainly our feelings about the situation didn’t gel really until December the 7th, 1941. I was in college at that time, and Joyce was at college. That’s where we met. We have been married over 50 years. 

Harper: Do you remember your reaction to the invasion of Poland? Were you concerned, was your community concerned, or your family concerned?
FARR: I don’t remember. I think during the years that our children grew up that we sat around the table (I hope we did and I think we did), and discussed things like that. Thank God there was no third world war for us to discuss, but world news I think was important to us. I don’t remember doing that in our family as I grew up. I don’t think it was. I have no recollection of grief or any idea of what was ahead as far as Hitler was concerned. At that time we knew very little about him. I remember he was characterized as the paperhanger. I think that’s right, and a painter. I remember some pictures of things like some of the amphitheaters and the standing up and the Nazi salute and the swastika of course, that sort of thing. But it didn’t do anything to me personally, so I really did not feel concerned. And of course I was 16 to 18 years old. 

Harper: And how about Pearl Harbor?
FARR: Pearl Harbor came as a real shock to us. Everybody who was alive at that time, in college or high school on certainly, will remember exactly where they were when they learned about it. It was Sunday morning. When I became aware of it I had just come back from church. First Christian Church of Eugene. And walked in the door of the house – I lived in a co-op in Eugene. I lived very economically and this is one of the evidences that we were certainly not an upper middle class family. I paid my entire way through college without any help even from my parents except that they always gave me a job and I used to work after school, and Saturdays, and vacations and all summer long and all that sort of thing. So Joyce and I both lived in co-ops. She lived at University House Co-op in Eugene, a girl’s co-op. And I lived at Kirkwood Co-op on 13th street. The building is no longer there, its part of the big hospital there, Sacred Heart Hospital, at the present time, the lot is. But I remember walking in and several of the fellows were on the Davenport and the radio was on and they were listening. That’s how I became aware of the occurrence of Pearl Harbor. 

And of course it occupied our minds extensively from that day on because there was a lot of fear that the Japanese were going to invade the United States, and my family lived near the coast. At that time my father and mother had just moved to Coos Bay, which is on a bay of the Pacific Ocean. So we suddenly began to curtain our windows. I am not sure we did that in Eugene but down on the coast they did. Drove with car lights on dim if you were out at night. So there was a lot of awareness. My father, lets see he would have been 51 at that time, he joined the Coast Guard Reserve in Coos Bay. And used to engage in volunteer patrolling of the wharfs and waterfront there in Coos Bay. So he got actively involved in that. My brother was old enough and had a family started so that he was never called to World War II as I was. 

Harper: Were you drafted or did you enlist? 
FARR: Well, I was registered as a non-combatant. As a result of my idealism I wasn’t a full conscientious objector. But I registered as a what turned out to be later classified as 1AO. I was patriotic, I was an Eagle Scout. I had a lot of patriotism in my heart. I loved my country. I wanted to do my share as best I could to my conscience, in conformity with my conscience. And so I didn’t, as my roommate did – Bob Carlson who later became a minister of a congregational church – he registered as a conscientious objector. I did not do that but I did register as a non-combatant. And as a matter of fact that made a substantial change in my life, which could be quite different, had there not been a change and maybe you would like to hear about that. 

I finished three years at the University of Oregon Business School and there were openings made for three year, that is Juniors, finished Juniors, at Harvard Business School in conjunction with Quarter Master Corps of the US Army. And I was given a full scholarship to go to the Harvard University for what would have been training combination Quarter Master Corps and getting a Master of Business Administration, an MBA. I went to Harvard and started the classes there and so forth. One day the colonel there – we had not only the chairman or whatever of the business school but we also were related to the military there. I had gone through ROTC, Reserve Officer Training Corps, training for two years at the University of Oregon so I was a good marcher, I played in the ROTC band and went to football games and basketball games playing my horn. And so I had some of the basics of military training. I had even at one time came very close to being a member of the rifle team for the ROTC because I was a good shot. I had grown up in a family where we had hunting rifles and I always had .22 rifle and eventually a shot gun, did some hunting and fishing and that sort of thing. And I was a good shot. My father and I helped to establish a firing range in Coquille in the old community building and we used to go down there and target practice. But most of my shooting was target practice, not hunting. I really didn’t enjoy killing things. Fact I never killed a deer. I don’t think I ever killed a pheasant or a duck. I remember as a little kid killing sparrows, birds. I regret that now but you know that was one of those things we did. There were three of us kids that grew up on West Fourth Street. Rolf and Fred and I. Rolf now lives here in Portland, a retired paving contractor, Rolf Ferman. And hunting was one of the things we did with our BB guns. 

Well anyway to get back to the story. After I was there about three or four weeks at Harvard University graduate school participating in this program, I had a call from the colonel to come over to his office. He talked to me for what must have been an hour trying to convince me to give up my non-combatant. He said, “You can not continue in this program with the 1AO classification with the military.” And I said, “Well, I am sorry but I don’t care to change that.” And he said, “Well that means that you are going to have to leave this program and leave this school, and probably be drafted.” I said, “Well, if that’s what happens, that’s what happens.” So I left Harvard, left my scholarship. They told me that I could come back and it was offered to me after the war but by that time we had a family started. And my dad was anxious for me to get back and take over from him. So I never did go back and complete that. To complete that story, our number two daughter has an MBA from Harvard [sounds choked up here]. 

Well anyway…so I came back to Oregon and volunteered for the draft. You could do that in those days. I spent some time with Joyce here in Portland and her family and I don’t remember whether we talked it over or whether I made up my own mind, but I decided I couldn’t go back to the university and finish up my fourth year at the University of Oregon. Chances were I would be drafted and I might as well get right into the service. In the meantime, I would say about 1942, probably February or March, I tried to volunteer for the American Field Service ambulance driving teams that were in North Africa. Trying to keep up with George Patton I guess. And I tried to volunteer for that. I felt a conviction to serve my country, to do my share. All the young men did. I am no hero for that, everybody felt that way. But I certainly didn’t shirk from it. It was a very dangerous business by the way, probably a good thing that I didn’t go as far as my future life was concerned. Very dangerous operation and it was all volunteer and so forth. You drove ambulances that had big red crosses on them. ‘Course I wound up doing that anyway in North Africa. 

So I don’t remember exactly what happened. I know for one thing my father tried to talk me out of it because he said, “Son, I think you better go in the army where you will have some benefits later.” Because of his age and his family, he had not served in World War I, and I think he always felt a little guilty, particularly around November the 11th, Armistice Day, when a lot of his friends engaged Armistice Day activities and he did not participate. He didn’t wear the cap and carry the gun and all that sort of thing. But he was also a very practical individual and he said undoubtedly the same thing will happen after World War II. And it did, as it did after World War I. The veterans will get certain benefits and if you join the American Field Service, which was an independent organization, you won’t have any of those benefits, which is true. And that may have been one of the things. And then I got caught up in going to Harvard, and then I left there. 

So, even in Boston when I left Harvard, when I checked out of the dormitory there and was headed home, I even went down to one of the recruiting offices in Boston, MA and tried to volunteer. When they found out my classification was 1AO, I remember the sergeant had a big laugh about it and joked about it around the room. Here’s a guy who is an objector or non-combatant and he wants to volunteer. Must be crazy, you know. They didn’t understand that you could want to serve but still not serve killing people. That’s what I told them always whenever they asked me, I said, “I am not going to shoot anybody. Now if that’s a problem, ok. But there must be something in the military that I can do that would not involve shooting people. Killing.” Anyway, I left Boston, came back to Oregon. I volunteered in Eugene at the draft board. I went in and volunteered as a what they called volunteer draft. And in August, I was shipped off to Fort Lewis. Now that’s quite a diversion. 

Harper: At this time, what was your official classification?
FARR: Private [laughing].

Harper: In the army?
FARR: Private. Recruit I guess you would say. A draftee, I was considered a draftee. Yes. I was a draftee.

Harper: Even though you had this status, this 1AO status, were you with a normal branch? Were you with combat soldiers?
FARR: No, no. They assigned me, thank God, to the medical department. When I went to Fort Lewis from Eugene by bus and was processed through as a soldier in the US Army and took all the tests, the intelligent tests and all of that sort of thing, got all my shots and so forth. Then one day they posted the list of the assignments for all of us draftees and I was assigned to Camp Barkley, Texas in the medical MRTC. I went through basic training in Camp Barkley, Texas. That’s near Abilene. 

Now because of my success I guess in going through basic and I think because of my boy scout training and my ROTC training, I was recommended to go to Officer Candidate Preparatory school, prep school for OCS. It was located at Camp Barkley also. So I just moved over, really, to another part of the camp immediately after basic training and went through the OCS prep school. Well they washed out more than 50% of the candidates there. I was one of the fortunate ones that didn’t get washed out. So having graduated from the preparatory school, it was a breeze then to go through officer candidate school. We had a fairly large class I think, maybe 250 or 300, I don’t recall how many officers candidates. And I graduated from that program number 1 in the class [laughing]. I can’t remember the class number, class number 13 runs in my mind but I am not sure. Anyway, on the complete of the OCS, I was commissioned to second lieutenant in the medical administrative corps. Not the medical corps, the medical corps are the doctors. And of course the nurse corps and veterinary corps and all that sort of thing. But I was medical administrative corps, MAC. And I was assigned then – you want me to go on?

Harper: Well, sure. I was going to ask you when were you first sent to Europe?
FARR: We went to Europe in May of 1944. Which was the first part of May. Was about five weeks before D-Day. 

Harper: Now can you tell me what unit and army you were attached to? Tell me how the MAC worked?
FARR: The medical administrative corps was a group of non-professionals, that is non-doctors (and non-nurses, of course) that were to take the administrative load of the operations of military units off the doctors’ shoulders. The doctors were for doctoring and the medical administrative corps handled such things as motor pool, the mess supply. I have served at various times as particularly a mess officer and a supply officer. And I think maybe for a short time, but I never was really drawn to it, in the motor pool as a motor officer.
 
I came back to Camp Addair. All the officers graduating from my class were very fortunate. We were all assigned to the nearest army camp or base closest to our hometown. So I came back to Camp Addair and spent some time there and I commuted to Portland to be with Joyce. We were just sweethearts at that time. Then I was assigned to Camp Ellis, Illinois and there wound up in the 236 station hospital. I remember that among my duties there was being a mess officer in a station hospital. But we were in training, all of this was training time. This was not operations time. At Camp Ellis I was transferred to a new organization, which was unique in the United States Army – there were five battalions. We were the 94th Medical Gas Treatment Battalion. The cadre came out of Camp Ellis, Illinois but we were then shipped to Gadsden, Alabama to Camp Sibert, Alabama, which is near Gadsden. We gradually grew into three companies, company A, B, C of the 94th Medical Gas Treatment Battalion and we trained there for the treatment of gas casualties. And thank God gas was never used in World War II. That’s another story. But we were used and we were shipped in April of ’44. We finally got settled in early May in South Wales. We were billeted there with families. And then on D-60 we landed at Utah Beach at Normandy. Sixty days after D-Day we were shipped over. And by that time we were assigned to 3rd Army. George S. Patton, Jr. was our three-star general.

Harper: What was it like staying back in England after D-Day? Had you heard about the incredible mass casualties and things like this?
FARR: It just so happens that on the day of D-Day I was on a supply mission. Had a jeep and a 6 x 6 truck. I was up in central England on the highways gathering up supplies for our participation in the war. And when you were traveling away from your home base, during mealtime you dropped into any US Army facility. I happened to drop in on the 82nd Airborne for lunch. I remember very distinctly sitting there, eating my lunch, and not talking to anybody because some of those guys were already back. I don’t remember whether it was the day – it must have been the day after D-Day. But some of them had parachuted in to Normandy and participated in the war there. Lost their buddies and all of that. Then been picked up and flown back. I don’t remember very many details about that but I do remember the impression that that made on me to hear the stories. Guys hanging up in the parachutes as they came down in a bunch of trees and Germans shooting them and that sort of thing. Hearing those stories, of course I was bug eyed I am sure. So really D-Day brought to me a lot of the realities of war, which I had only imagined before. 

Harper: So tell me about your landing in mainland Europe, what you did. 
FARR: We went out of South Hampton England on a liberty ship and went across in a small convoy. Balloons tethered above so the Luftwaffe strafers wouldn’t come down low and strafe our ship and so forth. We didn’t have any strafing, we didn’t have any problem.

Harper: If I could interrupt you. Obviously this convoy was armed?
FARR: Yes. Well, it had naval vessels accompanying. It was a liberty ship we were on. 

Harper: You were not armed?
FARR: No, no I never was armed. I take that back, at Camp Addair sometimes I would be payroll officer and I had to wear a .45 revolver, but it didn’t have any bullets in it. Not at my instigation, but it was just fake [laughing]. So that didn’t bother me. 

Harper:  We can go back to your landing.
FARR: So, we tethered or anchored out off Utah Beach, which is the northerly. Omaha was southerly. Down the peninsula anyway. Omaha was to our left. As you approach the beaches, Omaha, the famous one and the one that got all the attention on June 6, 1994 for the 50th anniversary (all of the attention went to Omaha beach, and they deserved it). Utah was not as difficult a landing as Omaha because that was where the concentration of Germans were. So we landed at Utah, D-60 August the 5th, 1944. They anchored the liberty ship out off the beach. They brought lighters in; we loaded our trucks on to those. We were a very mobile outfit. We had a lot of trucks, jeeps, ambulances. We had all kinds of mobile equipment because we were intended to be moved rapidly in case of gas attack. ‘Course, as I say, there was never any gas. The first thing that the US soldiers did on D-Day when they landed was to throw away their gas masks. They carried them in on the beach and they just piled up there on the beach. Because that would have been the time for the Germans to throw the gas, and they didn’t do it. It was burdensome, they were huge things. The gas mask was like this, hanging on your side [must be gesturing physically]. But they still sent us over anyway. 

We were on alert, of course, at the time of D-Day. We didn’t know why, but we were on alert. Because if the Germans had thrown gas at Omaha Beach, or Utah or anyplace, we’d have been thrown right in to treat the casualties. And as I say, thank God they didn’t do it. We had a scare later, by the way, but that’s another story. So when we came in, we came in on these little LSTs – landing ship tank – part of the navy I guess, I am not sure. Didn’t matter to me in those days. Then we landed actually on a wharf, which had been towed at D-Day or shortly after D-Day from England. A portable wharf. Then we drove the trucks and rode in them and so forth off on to the beach. We were directed by MPs to a bivouac area, which had recently been occupied by other US forces. We camped there for three or four days. Maybe it was only two or three days. Near Sainte-Mere-Eglise. That’s the village that we were near by. And we dug foxholes and pitched our pup tents and ate sea rations. 

Harper: At this time had you heard of concentration camps or extermination camps?
FARR: No, no. 

Harper: You had no idea?
FARR: No, I had no idea about it. No. 

Harper: Did you have any idea at all of the persecution of Jews in Europe?
FARR: I think we had read about it. I think we had an inkling of it but it wasn’t a big issue as far as…I don’t think any of us…Joyce is shaking her head. I mean we knew that Hitler was promoting the Aryan population and the Jews were contrary to that philosophy and his intent. But we had no idea of the extent of the persecution. No, that came as a total shock to me. 

Harper: Did you see battle or were you near a front line?
FARR: We were never attacked. The only time I was threatened and shot at was by friendly fire I guess you would call it [laughing], and it was just on a convoy that we were running down the highway. I don’t know how many stories you want but it was a soldier who was drunk. He was a hazard to my convoy. I was in the lead jeep of the convoy. And so I told my driver to pull him over and stop him and we discovered he was drunk. He was a signal corps soldier. He was weaving all over the highway and I figured he was going to hit us as my trucks that were behind me and jeeps and so forth came through. 

So my driver got out of the jeep and he was kind of a big guy and the soldier started arguing with him and so on. He hit him, my driver did. Well, he didn’t take care of him. I told him to lay off, I didn’t think that was the thing to do. So we drove on after we got him off the highway and thought we had him quieted down and so forth. Pretty soon he came passed all of our convoy and then set up a road block ahead and took a shot at us as we came by [laughs]. That’s just a war story. That sort of thing happens. 

But sure, we saw bombs going off, some of our convoy was strafed during one time early on right after we landed. See, we landed on the day that Patton’s 3rd Army broke through at Saint-Lo. That was the day that Patton broke through the German line and took Saint-Lo, which was a focus of one of the big battles early on in late July, early August. Finally they turned George loose with his 3rd Army tanks and he just went right through. And that happened to be the day that we landed at Utah Beach. 

If you look in the history books you will see that one of the first maneuvers he made – and it was stroke of genius – he went to the west down the highway where the Germans were, made a left turn and went to the east and then closed it by turning and going north.  It became known as the Avranches Gap. And there were thousands and thousands of Germans in there. They were captured or killed, eventually, all of them. The Falaise Gap or the Avranches Gap it became known as. And that was the first enormous victory of World War II that I was aware of, and that I am still aware of. But it of course came after thousands of our boys had died, were wounded, and so forth. But from then on it was just a chase with us to keep up with that 3rd Army. 

Harper: Were you treating casualties at all? Helping out, treating war casualties?
FARR: They didn’t know what to do with us. No gas. So our primary mission was, well there was no way to accomplish it. It just so happened that when we went down just to the west of the Avranches Gap, and of course we could see all the fighting that was going on – we didn’t actually see it but we saw the smoke and heard the guns and all that sort of thing. There were bodies all over, and the stink of death. There were a lot of horses laying along side the road that had been killed. Nobody bothered to pick anything up so it just turned in to kind of a scene of slaughter in a way. 

But as we went down that road, the 3rd Army freed a prisoner of war camp. And in this camp were of course US soldiers, French soldiers, British soldiers and so forth. Well many of them were wounded and they chose to get them out of there. So the chief of medical services – he’s called the Army Surgeon – the chief of medical services for 3rd Army assigned our battalion to take care of the evacuation of those prisoners. They assigned Company B of which I was a member to do that, so we went down south to where the prisoners were gathered, set up our tents and received them. They had already had medical assistance through the station hospitals and of course in the POW camp and so forth. So we did not in effect treat them. We treated them from the standpoint of changing dressings, relief of pain and suffering and that sort of thing. We didn’t do any surgery. As a matter of fact we were forbidden to do surgery because that was not our mission. We could do surgery if there was no place else to put them. 

Our mission was to receive casualties and POWs and to house them, feed them, and then load them onto C-47s which were flown in with gasoline primarily but other supplies also – telephone wire, communications equipment and so forth. Came to the most forward airstrips as they were freed by the 3rd Army. And we loaded the casualties and POWs, whatever we had, onto those C-47s and then they were flown back to England. That was our first experience with the war. 

As a result of the job we did, the chief surgeon of the 3rd Army came after that job was over and told our colonel you just found yourself a job. So we became known as the Air Evacuation Holding Unit, 94th. We retained our number. The 94th Medical Gas Treatment Battalion became a pseudonym of Air Evacuation Holding Unit – AEHU. Later, when we got into the eastern part of France, we became known as an AREU – air and rail, because we evacuated casualties by rail. And we always evacuated them by ambulance and that sort of thing. But we became the funnel, the point of the funnel, through which almost all 3rd Army casualties came. And I will throw in a statistic at this point. Before the end of the war, 19 months later, we had handled over 90,000 casualties which will probably stand forever as a record in the US army for one medical outfit to handle. 

Harper: You said you saw some of the carnage on the battlefield? Is that right?
FARR: Along the road, yes. I would not go into the Avranches Gap or where the battle was going on. That was not our mission. 

Harper: Were there dead people littered about? On the side of the roads?
FARR: Well, mostly what we saw, because of course other medical units ahead of us had picked up casualties. The graves registration people had picked up the bodies. The wounded people were taken care of by other medical units. Mainly what we saw were perhaps a body part in a tree, or a uniform in a tree, or something like that. But we saw horses of course. And the smell was awful as you drove down the highway. Because as I say nobody really cleaned up until I don’t know when, but well after we were gone. 

Harper: Can you continue with your progression through Europe?
FARR: Well, I am not sure I can tell you exactly how many airfields we sat on at various times – 19? – as we progressed following the 3rd Army and trying to keep up. Sometimes it would only be one company of our battalion that would occupy an airfield because there weren’t that many casualties or people to be evacuated. But we went from the coast stopping at several fields and evacuating casualties. 

The next big event was that we were ordered to set up east of Paris. Captain Dan Diaconi, MD (medical doctor) and I were in a convoy – I was the motor pool officer I guess – in the lead jeep, both of us. We were buddies during the war, we spent a lot of time together. He’s a retired chief surgeon of Salem general hospital by the way. He lives in Salem, Oregon. He was Italian by his name and from New York and he had some knowledge of geography which I didn’t have. We didn’t have any maps except where we were going. We came to a junction in the road at one point and he said, “I think if we turn right here we will go down into Paris.” I looked at him and I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well why don’t we divert it here just a little bit, we got plenty of time. Lets go down and see what’s going on in Paris.” So we did. 

We took that whole convoy. We wound up on the Champs Elysees going down there; 6 x 6s full of tents, medical equipment, guys hanging all over. We joined the parade. That was the day that Eisenhower and Patton, I don’t remember whether Marshall was there. Anyway the big wigs were all there. That was the official liberation day of Paris. Every Parisian was on the Champs Elysees I think. The gals were grabbing the guys and kissing them. The guys were throwing oranges out. They hadn’t seen oranges for years, of course. People were passing bottles of wine up to the guys in the back. Course they were drinking it, everybody was having a great time [laughing and choked up]. When we finally got to our airfield that night, colonel wanted to know where we had been. Or somebody did. So then I told him we had gotten lost (I think that is what we said), we had gotten lost and wound up in Paris. Well nothing was ever said about it. As a matter of fact it’s a joke now at our reunions. We were the only ones that did that. It was kind of a platoon that we had and it was I don’t know, 10 or 12 vehicles. We occupied an airfield at Reims, which is east of Paris. We occupied an airfield at Tulle, which is near Nancy [sounds like Non-see]. That’s when we were there that our oldest daughter was born. I am afraid I am getting emotional. 

Harper: That’s ok. Do you want to take a break?
FARR: No, I am ok. We then went up to near the border with Luxembourg, around a town near Thionville, and we occupied an airstrip there. At Thionville, while we were at Thionville the 3rd Army got bogged down because they were trying to slow Patton up. And so they withheld gas – this is my own story now – in order to slow the tanks down. And that’s where we were at this airstrip in Thionville during the Battle of Bulge, which was December of 1944. They say we handled all of the casualties, I am sure that’s not exactly right, but a vast majority of the casualties of 3rd Army that were evacuated, wounded or otherwise. Lots of trench foot, very sad cases because as you know from reading history books perhaps, the guys were laying in their foxholes, it was raining, snowing; it was cold and wet. One of the things that we were constantly told was to put on dry socks at least once a day. Dry your shoes out. That’s basic health; keep your feet in good shape. We were on the edge of the Bulge. Again, we saw the bombs bursting and heard the fire and all that sort of thing, but fortunately no one came across our airfield. Germans didn’t get that far. 

Harper: Can I interrupt you and then ask, while you were sort of close to this battle, what did you do? Were you scared, were you just hanging around?
FARR: Oh I think you are too busy to be scared. Sure I was scared I suppose the day I went in the army, I don’t know. I mean you live with a certain amount of fear because you never knew when you came around a corner down a highway whether something was going to be there looking for you. Lots of snipers around for instance. But we had an almost miraculous experience. We had over 300 people in this battalion. And we had I think it was two purple hearts and no casualties. Our trucks drove over a million miles back and forth, moving medical outfits, moving hospitals, evacuating personnel. We were a charmed organization as far as I was concerned. And you know I don’t suffer any guilt from that. Some people might say well why weren’t you in more of the bloody part of it. Well, I was in the bloody part of it but only after the wounded and the damaged people. And I have always been thankful that I was enabled to participate in the war in a positive way. I mean, I consider it positive because we were saving lives rather than destroying them. And I’ve given you the background – that was important to me. 

Harper: Can you get back to the Battle of the Bulge? You can continue with your progression through Europe.
FARR: There I think my main duty was Company B supply officer. I remember we had little tin stoves. They were two pieces of stove, meshed together, and you took them apart and put one on top of the other. We had four inch stove pipe that when up through the tents. We had hospital tents, huge tents, like a circus tent. Smaller than a circus tent but like that. And they were full of casualties and by that I mean litters, stretchers. We didn’t have any beds, we had stretchers. Whatever the solidier was brought in on in the ambulance or however he got into our installation, that was his home until he left. No sheets, no bedding, no nothing like that. They just lived in their stinking uniforms. And if you needed to change a bandage and the uniform got in the way you took a knife or a scissors and cut it and changed the dressing. But we fed them. 

But at Thionville I remember one of my jobs was to just go out and find fuel. That took me away from my unit an awful lot and probably had some danger from snipers and that sort of thing, but I never had any problem. I remember going and scrounging coal, there’s a lot of coalmines just east of there. And there was a factory on the airfield that we were located on. I even went over there one day and took apart enough pieces of pipe and so forth to make a water heater unit for the little fireplace that we had built out of used bricks in our officers tent. Company B officers tent had a fireplace in it and I took old galvanized pipe that I stole from the factory that had been bombed out – it was all in pieces – and made some coils and rigged up a tank outside and we had a German war prisoner, medical troops that were attached to us by that time, who did such things as carry water for the water tanks and do that sort of thing. 

Well anyway I rigged up a hot water system for our tent, which was the envy of everybody else of course. We burned coal and then the coal got short so I heard that there was a possibility of going up into Luxembourg and getting some wood. So I went up to the headquarters of some unit of 3rd Army and inquired and they sent me to the Luxembourg City government office there where I found the forestry department and they gave me a permit to drive into the forest. They had beautifully cut wood all stacked by the side of the road so we would load our trucks with that and take it back and burn that. We tried to keep the tents warm. You can imagine with snow on the ground and everywhere and cold, Christmas time. One of my recollections of casualties while we were at Thionville and during the Bulge was talking to US army boys who said that they had been on Times Square for Christmas Eve, December the 24th. They were back in our unit, wounded, and being loaded onto C-47s to fly to either Paris or London at that time on New Year’s Eve. One week they had been away from the United States and now they were on their way back, wounded. And many of them very seriously wounded of course. That always made an impression on me, was how fast it happened to some of the guys. They really never had a chance to get used to the battle. They were thrown in to relieve the troops and bolster our forces. And it was essential to do that, I am not questioning that. But that’s happening fast to them. 

Anyway, we left there in January and went on east and we followed the Moselle River down, went across at the Rhine on pontoon boats. I am sure you want to talk about Buchenwald and I don’t know whether you want to do it at this time. I am not really all that clear about my geography of Germany. We have been there several times. I have never been back to Buchenwald, I am not sure I could go. But Buchenwald is near Gotha and not far from Weimar, Germany. I don’t know whether I am pronouncing them correctly or not. Are we ready for that part of the story? I see we are about an hour and a half into the tape. 

Harper: Yes. Lets take a break. [first tape ends] 

Harper: [second tape starts] Ok, if we could begin you describing your witnessing of Buchenwald.
FARR: Do you want to know why I went there?

Harper: Well yes, I mean where were you and was this an optional trip that you took? 
FARR: Ok, yes, that’s what I meant. I will give you that story. Our whole battalion was at the airfield at Gotha and suddenly several light planes landed at our airfield. We realized that they were VIPs. Eisenhower, Patton, General Gay, chief of staff of Patton’s 3rd Army of which we were a part, and others. I don’t remember who else, but those in particular I remember. They got out of their planes and go into command cars. I was not right there but according to the colonel who wrote memoirs, they came over and greeted the guys who were standing there. We of course wondered what was going on. Something must be going on. Make a long story short, it turned out that they were headed for Buchenwald to see what had been liberated the day before. This was the day after the liberation. And they invited our colonel to go with them. They went to Buchenwald and he gives a pretty detailed description, which I may read later if you would like. A description of his impressions of Buchenwald, and he saw more than I saw. 

But when he came back there was only one of our company that were involved in our operation. The other two were just billeted there, and fortunately Dan Dioconi and I were not doing anything at the moment. That is we were not engaged in the operation, Company B was not engaged. And he spread the word to the company commanders that they should send all available personnel, and particularly officers, to see Buchenwald before nightfall. It was early afternoon. And so as I say, fortunately Dan and I grabbed a jeep and took off and went up to the prison camp. 

I will never forget the sight as we approached the gate to the prison. The gates opened, out of it came a horse drawn flat bed wagon. No side sticks on it at all, just a flat bed wagon. A farm wagon actually. Piled on the wagon were naked corpses. The thing that sticks in my mind was that they were piled on there crossways to the wagon and they were two and half to three or maybe even four feet deep on the wagon. They had stacked them in such a way that the ones whose head were on our side of the wagon as it went by would bob. Or the legs of others who were stacked the other way would flop up and down. 

Well, we could not imagine what we were seeing really. It was unreal. And mind you there was so little information about this that we had before that it just came as a total shock to us. We then went in through the gates and into the camp. We were greeted by  (of course the colonel and the generals were conveyed through the camp, he relates in his story) by a recently arrived internee from Holland who spoke English. So they got a real tour. And he is very descriptive about some of it. And as I say if you like I will read it to you. They saw the whole camp, more than we did. But I remember the next sight that greeted me was to see one of the barracks. The barracks at each end had what I would describe as a coal bin. They were an open space, maybe six or eight feet wide and six or seven feet deep. Each of those bins was stacked full of corpses. And of course what the wagon was doing was loading these corpses up and taking them to a burial site, which was dug out by a bulldozer, an army bulldozer, and they were pitching these bodies into the trench and then sprinkling lime on them. It was just a human mass grave. The corpses were like skeletons. They were non-human to us in appearance. The eyes would bug. I mean these are people who had of course recently died because the camp had only been liberated the day before. Now, the liberators (I don’t know this but I can imagine), they didn’t make any attempt to clean up. But by the next day, which we were there, this became the official day of liberation because that was when the VIPs got there.

Harper: And that date was? Do you remember?
FARR: I knew you were going to ask me. It’s in the book. It was in April. 1945. And we saw several what you might call walking corpses walking about in a state of bewilderment on their faces. Suddenly they were free. They were free to go if they wanted to, the gate was open. Or they would open the gate for them. And this must have been such a shock to them. 

One man approached us, Dan and I, and he spoke some German and Dan spoke a limited amount of German and French, and he dropped his pants and he said, “Look what they did to me.” And they had castrated him. He was castrated. 

We then went into one of the barracks and there were inmates in the barracks, a few of them sitting around on the bunks, and the bunks were of course no mattresses, just bare wood. They were about that far apart, in order to get into the bunk to sleep you had to almost be a contortionist it looked to me like. They were stacked clear to the ceiling and there were a few of the inmates that were lying in their bunks, trying to get some sleep or probably too weak to get up and walk around. And of course it was a terrible smell. Rot and all of that sort of thing. I don’t remember any death stink to it because I think it hadn’t really been long enough. Well I am not sure what I smelled but I just remember that it was very repugnant and made you want to vomit and get out of there. 

We then went over to the headquarters, the office of the camp. And in there was a lamp which had as a shade, the shade was made out of the skin of obviously one of the inmates who had a tattoo. I understand that that was not unusual in the camps for the office to have electric lamps, which the shades were made out of preserved skin from the inmates. The story was that if an inmate had an interesting tattoo why they did away with him but first they cut out the tattoo and made something out of it as something to see. Well of course I can imagine with a light bulb behind it, it probably was pretty explicit. We went to where the furnaces were and there were pieces of bone and ash and so forth in all of the furnaces. They had obviously had not been cleaned from the time they had last been used which I presume was not too long ago. 

We also saw the pit in which inmates were killed. They were slaughtered by, I had been told, some kind of hammer mechanism like you would cattle. I have seen cattle slaughtered. And then of course they were carried to the ovens and cremated. Unfortunately we did not take the time to get our cameras. I am not sure what I even had for a camera. I have a few pictures, but none of Buchenwald, none at all of Buchenwald. I don’t have any personal pictures of that unfortunately. It’s too bad I didn’t have a camera, but I didn’t. 

Harper: When did you find out what this was that you had come across?
FARR: Well, we had been warned of course by our colonel of what we were going to see. I mean just briefly we were told that he wanted all available personnel to go and visit this prison camp, concentration camp at Buchenwald. And I really was not ready for what we saw. I was not mentally prepared; I had no vision of what it might be. I could not imagine humans treating other humans in this manner. It was unspeakable, the treatment that these people got. In the military of course, theoretically you are backed as a prisoner of war by the Geneva Convention which was established after World War I in which those who take prisoners of war are required by the Convention to provide medical treatment, food, shelter, the basics of human life. Obviously these people were starving to death. They were not fed. And of course the stories that we learned later about the treatment that they got. But I saw the result of it. I didn’t see the treatment but I saw the result of it and it was inhumane. 

Harper: At this time did you think that these people were political prisoners?
FARR: No, we realized that they were mostly Jewish people, yes. We knew that. I don’t know what percentage of the people in the concentration camp were Jewish and those that were not. I know from what I read later that there were political prisoners in those camps. I don’t know whether there were any prisoners of war or not. So far as I know there were no American soldiers in that camp. It was not a POW camp. Our prisoners of war of the United States Army were treated not as well I imagine as what I saw the treatment that we gave prisoners. I mean I like to think that, that we treated them better. And they were subjected to things like forced marches and that sort of thing. But not the inhumane, horrible treatment that the concentration camps brought upon the Jewish people and the other prisoners of the concentration camp.

Harper: Were you involved in any of the medical treatment of the survivors of the camp?
FARR: No. 

Harper: You had nothing to do with their evacuation or anything like that?
FARR: No, no. After our looking around at the camp, we got back in our jeep and drove back to the airfield. 

Harper: Do you know who took care of the prisoners initially?
FARR: Well, I learned later that after Eisenhower and Patton and others had been there that one of them – sounds like something George might do, general Patton – ordered the soldiers who were there doing the cleaning up and so forth to roust the people of the village that was nearby and make them go through the camp and see. In other words, they became witnesses to this. And I am sure they didn’t like it. The colonel in his memoirs indicates that many of them said, “Well, we didn’t know what was going on in the prison camp, in the concentration camp. When the wind was just right sometimes we smelled funny smells.” It’s not my intent to make judgment about the German people, I have my own private view about it, but there have been lots of books written about it, and movies and so forth. It’s very difficult for me to watch the movies that have come out. In fact I have never watched one. I am not sure I could get through it. 

Harper: When did you find out about the extermination camps, like Auschwitz, and camps like that?
FARR: I don’t think I was aware until after the war of the extent of the concentration camps. Until after the war I never heard of Auschwitz. Now I did visit Dachau after the war because it was near Munich. I was transferred immediately after VE Day. The air evacuation holding unit, my unit the 94th, was stationed in Regensburg, on the airfield at Regensburg on VE Day. Things I remember about that were German pilots flying in small planes and surrendering. They surrendered to us, the 94th. Of course we immediately turned them over to MPs. After the boys stripped all their metals and their guns and all that sort of thing off of them, I mean there was no problem. They were coming to surrender to the Americans rather than the Russians. They were afraid the Russians were going to get them. They thought they would be treated better by the Americans than by the Russians. 

But right after the war, within a few days, after VE Day, I was transferred into Patton’s headquarters in Munich and became – I was a first lieutenant – and I became education officer for all 3rd Army medical troops, which was a nice job. We were billeted in one of the few remaining large buildings in Munich and I spent from sometime in May or June after the war until along about I think October in 3rd Army headquarters, Patton’s headquarters. I learned about Dachau, which was not too far away, I think about 40 miles west. So one of the other officers in the office and I took a command car one day and went to Dachau. That was the sort of thing that you did after the war was over. And Dachau at that time had been cleaned up. The bodies were all gone. It was cleaned up. And I understand that the local German people were forced to do the cleaning up. Handle the bodies and all that sort of thing so that they would see what had gone on near their town. I remember mainly going in and being impressed, seeing the room in which – the famous room – in which the Jews were brought in and told that they were to take showers. And in the ceiling were what looked like showerheads. Of course there was no water that came out of the shower; gas came out of the shower. And they were all exterminated in a mass in this room. And then the bodies were carried out.  

[Interview ends abruptly]