An Interview with Nathan Shoehalter, for the Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II. Interview conducted by G. Kurt Piehler and Linda Lasko, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on October 16, 1995. Transcript by Althea Miller and Bojan Stefanovic and Shaun Illingworth and Nathan Shoehalter and Sandra Stewart Holyoak.

Nathan Shoehalter's parents were non-practicing Jews from Russia. (His father was a socialist and agnostic.) He served as a medic in Europe.

Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the Oral History Archives of World War II. This excerpt is for educational purposes only. Permission to quote from this transcript must be obtained from the Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II.

KP: It sounds like quite a bit of Yiddish was spoken in your family.

NS: Oh, very much so. That was the language. . . . I speak Yiddish now and understand it, of course. I don't read it though. They never taught me how to read Hebrew. We just never [learned] and I think I might have been relieved about not having to go through the bar mitzvah. . . . It was meaningless. It really was meaningless for my parents and for me. I didn't know many Jewish kids when I was growing up, as a matter-of-fact.

KP: In your neighborhood, who do you remember?

NS: ... Well, I remember one, ... Herbie Zack said, "Go home and tell your mother she's a kike." I remember that very, very distinctly. Then, there was Leon Oxenford and my very good friend, Mickey Pascal, who was Italian, of course. I remember sitting in his house and his eating pasta fagiola. I didn't know what the hell pasta fagiola was. There were no Jews in our area. Most of the people who lived around us were Germans. ... As a matter-of-fact, the people who lived above us, the Kellerhoffs, were arrested by the FBI. My very dear friend was Teddy Eyrich, whose father might have been a Nazi, because he took Teddy and me to Andover, New Jersey, where the Bund gathered. I remember seeing that swastika flying above the flag of the United States. It didn't mean anything. It was 1939, 1940, something like that.

KP: But, your friend's father taking you to Andover, did he know you were Jewish?

NS: Oh, sure, everybody knew we were Jews. . . . . Teddy and I, I don't know how we got to be friendly, but, we were. . . . We were just good friends. I never thought of him as German, or he thought of me as a Jew, or anything like that. It was never any of that. The only time was that one incident, where, "Go home and tell your mother she's a kike." Herbie Zack also gave me a scar. He hit me with a kazoo, but, I don't know, you know, childish pranks, but, there was never any overt anti-Semitism, that I was ever aware of. Never, but, I am sure it was there. Leon Oxenford, for example, he was a son of a bitch, a kid my age, but, he was a nasty boy, but, I didn't know why. You know, I remember Mickey Pascal telling me, "Your people killed Christ, you killed Christ." I don't know, "Who's Christ? I didn't have anything to do with it." ... That's the kind of thing we grew up with. Never discussed this with my parents at all.

KP: So, they never told stories about the pogroms?

NS: Well, that's an interesting thing, because, in 1935, my mother had been receiving letters from Russia, and then, she got a letter which upset her and my father terribly. ... It wasn't until later that I found out ... what the reason was. It seems that her two brothers, who were married, and, as she said, "Of the intelligentsia," they were doctors, or pharmacists, or something like that. They, and their wives, and their children were all murdered by the Stalinists in a pogrom in Russia. They never discussed this with us .

[Shoehalter discusses college life at Rutgers.]

KP: Some people I have interviewed from urban areas felt some sort of resentment from some of the Aggies [agricultural students] from farm families. Did you have any?

NS: Oh, no, no. Those kids were marvelous. I used to hear stories about these kids who grew up on the egg farms down in Lakewood and the corn crop. No, no. These were awfully nice kids. They were really nice kids. I was never very close to any of them. Quite frankly, I was never invited to become a member of a fraternity, for example. I was elected to Alpha Zeta and I didn't realize that they were a segregated honorary [fraternity]. They didn't allow blacks in. When I found out, I didn't know whether should I accept it. Should I not accept it? It was really ... a terrible thing. That was, I guess, my second year at school and coming, you know, from the Socialist background. I never went to school with a black kid.

. . . .

KP: How did you resolve this issue with the fraternity?

NS: I was initiated and I keep resolving it. I'm still on their mailing list. I never send them a penny. I was thrilled by the fact I would make an honorary society, and I remember my father coming down to the initiation at the Roger Smith Hotel, and was very proud of what I had been able to do, but, I shouldn't have done it, you know. In retrospect, I shouldn't have done it.

. . . .

KP: What about your thoughts in 1940, and 1941, and even earlier? How did you see things?

NS: Well, we had ROTC here. I was not a member of ROTC, I was in the band. So, we went out with the troops, but, I never had any military training as such, you know. ... I didn't think anything was going to happen. Quite frankly, I was really ignorant and quite naive. Never talked about it in school, never talked about it in classes, about a coming war or anything like that. ... Did I have a political science course? I don't think I did have a political science course.

KP: So, Pearl Harbor really did come out of the blue for you?

NS: Oh, boy. Yeah, I remember that very, very clearly. That Sunday, I was home. I was in Irvington. I used to go home to do the laundry, and my normal practice was to come home, and do the laundry, and come back Sunday night. That afternoon, I heard the announcement, and then, that evening, went to Penn Station in Newark. ... Well, we were talking about conscription, and there was a draft, and what was the number, 128? It didn't mean a damn thing to me, not a thing, couldn't care less. I was seventeen or eighteen at the time, but, it didn't really mean anything. Pearl Harbor didn't mean anything. I knew we were at war, and the excitement at Penn Station was just palpable, but, I got the local train to New Brunswick, and the next day, Roosevelt made his very famous speech, you know. ... We were sitting on the stairs going up to the second floor and listening to the radio when he made his famous December 7th, "Day, which will live in infamy," [speech]. Still didn't mean anything, not anything.

KP: So, you did not have the urge to go in and enlist?

NS: No, I was too young. I thought I was too young. I didn't have to register for the draft until I was eighteen, I guess. ... Then, afterwards, you know, the upperclassmen, you would hear about guys enlisting, or going off to Canada, or, you know, go to Canada to sign up for the ambulance corps, stuff like that. Just like in World War I, I guess, that kind of history, but, it didn't really hit me, ... because the news reports were so, you know, there was the disaster at Pearl Harbor. I use that term in retrospect, but, it was something that happened in a war. Sumatra fell, and Borneo fell, and Wake Island fell, ... but, Honolulu was still there, and there were no attacks on the United States, and nothing on the East Coast. There might have been brownouts after 1941, December 7th, but, it really wasn't, to my mind, a very [real thing]. ... I just didn't feel it until 1942. Then, a lot of the guys were leaving and that's when I enlisted. I enlisted in, I guess, November of 1942, without my parents' knowledge.

KP: What prompted you to enlist at the time, in November of '42?

NS: Everybody was doing it. Not everybody was doing it, but, I thought I'd be able to finish my education, quite honestly. That, if I were enlisted, but, still in college, that I might be deferred, or something like that. I wasn't thinking of deferment, really, I was thinking of finishing school. Everybody was going, and I just felt, it wasn't patriotism at all, it was just that it was the thing to do. That's what happened.

KP: Why the Army? Why not the Navy or the Air Corps?

NS: Who knows. I have no idea. I mean, in retrospect, I would have picked something that didn't put me in such terrible danger, afterwards. I had no idea what the hell was in front of me.

. . . .

NS: Well, I was a wonderful follower. I was not a leader of men by any means and I think that's what happened. I was meat, a lot of us were meat. ... I thought the Air Force was fine, but, I didn't want to fly. I was scared silly about flying. You know, being in a railroad was enough for me, [laughter] scary, but, no, seriously, and ships, I would get violently ill on. I didn't want to be in the Navy and get seasick, you know, but, I never thought about my Army experience at all. I mean, you know, they need me, I'll do what they want.

KP: So, initially, you enlisted and how did your parents take it?

NS: Not well. Not well at all. "Oy," I remember my mother, "Oy, oy, oy," but, I learned a lot, though, by enlisting. I found out I needed glasses. I'd been going through college not seeing the blackboards, not being able to read, and they fitted me out with glasses, and, my God, I have twenty-twenty vision. I can see what the hell Fender was writing on the board.

. . . .

KP: You initially reported where, Fort Dix?

NS: Fort Dix, yeah. . . . When I got in there, you know, the first night, that first night at Fort Dix was scary as hell. They put you in, you're active all the time, do shots, and clothes, and do this, and do that, get up at four o'clock in the morning. This bastard, the sergeant, got out there. I wish I could remember his name, he was marvelous. I mean, you see him in the movies all the time. He was just like the movies, but, I remember not being able to sleep well, because some people were crying. Some people were having bad dreams and we were in double bunks, you know.

KP: So, it was a shock for a lot of people.

NS: It was a tremendous shock. [I] didn't know anybody. There might have been one guy from Rutgers who I recognized, but, it was an enormous shock.

. . . .

[Shoehalter supplied the following written material to be inserted in the interview transcript.]

 I enlisted in the Army in November '42 while still an undergraduate at Rutgers University -- 19 years old and remarkably innocent.  My first taste of active combat came nearly two years later, in October of '44, when my division, the 95th, was charged with the capture of Metz and surrounding areas.

 My family had saved all the letters I'd written home, letters with only vague references to my location ("somewhere in France") and full of reassurances to keep up their morale.  In reading these letters for the first time just recently, I was overwhelmed by memories that I could never have shared with them.  The horror and fear came rushing back.  I cried as I read my letters as I was never able to cry when I wrote them.  I remembered what it was like to walk in a permanent stoop, a kind of running lope, the better to hit the ground at the first sound of 88s or rifle and burp-gun enemy fire.  The single thought was to find places that offered protection from enemy shells, a hole in the ground, a tree to hide behind, a fold in the earth.

 Before my first exposure to active combat, I had naively assumed that fighting stopped at nightfall, to resume again only at daybreak.  I soon learned that warfare is incessant and omnipresent; that the relentless din of artillery, rifle fire, and machine guns knows no timetable.

 Our first encounter with the front line came when we were assigned to replace the Fifth Division regiments.  We were dropped off at the front by a black soldier truck outfit.  This was our jumping off point.  I was a Company Aid man/litter bearer in an infantry division.  That meant under the Geneva Convention I was not permitted to carry arms; all I had along with the three other members of the litter squad were morphine needles, lots of bandages, and sulfa powder, no weapon.

 The men we were relieving trooped wordlessly past, haggard, slumped, with glazed expressions.  Their weapons were slung casually, their uniforms were filthy, they carried nothing more than their ammo belts, and a raincoat.  The only ruptures of the eerie stillness were the whooshing sounds of men walking and an occasional clink of metal as a rifle brushed against a helmet.  The transfer was accomplished in total darkness and silence; the silence was essential because we were but a few yards away from the Germans, a few yards!

 . . . . I expected banter from the departing soldiers just like in the movies, a grin, a wisecrack, then on to the job of getting the war over with.  Our silence was the silence of fear, where are the Germans, how many of them are there, where will I sleep, why is there shooting at this hour?  Look at those tracer bullets!  Why is it so dark?  Who am I following in this vast night as we move into position?  Is it Kelley, Goldberg?

 Our foxholes and deep trenches were already prepared by the companies we replaced.  The barbed wire in front of us was strung with cans and pieces of metal that would make a sound if anyone tried to come through it.  There was some kind of comfort knowing that ours were so-called "safe" positions, yet we could hear the enemy close by.

 The morning after our entry into the line I was called on to help load three bodies of our men who were killed the night of our commitment.  It was the first time in my life I had ever seen a dead body, the stiffness, the torn olive drab covering the fatal wounds, all this was new and horrifying.

 Our first attack assault on the German pillbox (not far from Metz) was launched from a crossroads in the tiny French village of Gravelotte.  I remember the barn, it looked like a store, where we were assembled at night before the attack.  I see the infantry guys lying around cleaning their weapons, some are writing, some are sleeping, there is no conversation as each of us, scared, prepare for the attack.  I remember hearing the field telephone ring, and fearing that it might be from one of our platoons reporting an injury we'd have to go out and attend to.  It was.  And the four of us, in the blackest of nights, took off with our litter and only a vague description of where the injured man lay.  The Very lights illuminated the modest homes of the town and cast an otherworldly silvery light on the scene; we froze in position in order not to be seen.

 . . . .We were in the woods, at the edge of the open field that we would have to cross to get to our objective, a bunker in a line of bunkers that were erected to protect Metz from capture.  The assault started hours before dawn with an awesome artillery attack.  We knew about these "rolling barrages" from the "Why We Fight" training films.  Outgoing shells fell in front of us and at our flanks, whistling closely over our heads.  At no time were we told what to expect, artillery, incoming fire, woods, fields, nothing.  As the hissing shells exploded with deafening roars, I remember thinking that if they hit a tree here in the woods, we'd be goners, dispatched by our own artillery fire.

 Then, for some unfathomable reason, in the midst of this ferocious barrage, I had a vivid image of a phonograph album in the window of the Rivoli Music Shop on George Street in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I went to college.  The jacket of that album read "Komm Susse Todt" -- "Come, Sweet Death!"  I remember thinking, hoping, that someday I would be telling somebody about this strange distraction in the middle of my first battle.

. . . .

 I remember standing up and running like hell to get to the safety of the bunker and then getting the call that one of our guys had been wounded and needed help.  We had to go out and get him and fix him up.

 We lived in that pillbox for four days, without food or fresh water, and cut off from our division.  One of our wounded died there for lack of blood.  We were reduced to drinking our own urine that we "purified" with halogen tablets.  We drank the water that we pissed, that seeped through the ceiling of the bunker from a room above us.

 It was outside this same bunker that I was shot at, even though I had the Red Cross brassard on my arm and Red Cross on my helmet.  I was outside searching for some plasma that an artillery spotter plane had dropped in response to our earlier radio call for medical supplies.  I remember seeing the parachuted material coming down and then the firing of the burp-guns as the plane circled.  The plasma arrived, but we could not inject it because we couldn't find a vein he was so bloated.  We tried everything, an arm, the ankle, his neck.  I can still hear the burbling sounds as he drowned in his own fluid.  Our patient died crying piteously for "momma."

. . . .

KP: On the line. What did you eat?

NS: K-rations, and when we went into combat, when we were going into an attack, we had a thing called a D-bar, a Hershey chocolate, eight ounces of chocolate. You shoved the K-rations into your shirt, where you kept your dry socks. If you were lucky, you could get to eat them, and, if you were very lucky, you get to heat the wax covered case of the K-ration as your thing, to make your, whatever the hell it was, spam, or spaghetti and meatballs, or that was spaghetti and hot-dogs, whatever it was, to heat them up, but, the food was dreadful.

KP: How many times would you get a hot meal when you were on the line?

NS: Never.

KP: Really? Your division never got you hot food?

NS: Well, never is hard to say.

KP: It seems like it was infrequent enough to not stand out.

NS: It was infrequent, it was infrequent. I remember, one time, I got a hold of bread and a number ten can of ketchup, and we looted some onions, and I had an onion sandwich. That was so delicious. Wonderful, Army white bread, which we cut up with a kid's bayonet, but, I don't remember any hot meals at all.

KP: What about hot showers?

NS: Once.

KP: Once, you got rotated off for a shower?

NS: Yeah, yup. ... Your pants, you know, they were stiff, dirt and grease. You just stripped down and walked into [the shower]. It was cold, it was November, and you went into this hot shower, and you stayed as long as you like. When you went out, you picked up a shirt, and pants, and underwear, and socks, and shoes.

KP: But, you must have felt like a million bucks.

NS: Oh, it was so wonderful, it was absolutely wonderful. ... I only had one hot shower in ninety odd, some odd ninety days, and it was behind the lines, you know. There was no fears, a wonderful experience. I was amazed that there would be such a unit, but, then again, I was so ignorant and so naive. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I knew there would always be bullets. I knew there would always be a truck waiting for us when we were put off the line. I knew there would always be a jeep to carry the litters out, but, I don't know. Somehow, it would all get there.

. . .

KP: It kind of sounds like you were really glad you did not have to shoot. Is that correct, or would you have if they had issued you a rifle?

NS: I wouldn't want to kill anybody.

KP: Really?

NS: No, no. I think I say that in retrospect. At the point, at one point, I suppose, those sons of bitches ...

KP: If they had given you a rifle, at that moment, you might have fired?

NS: I don't think I would have fired.

KP: Although it has been very controversial, Army historians sort of made the argument that, in fact, a huge number of people felt like you and would not fire their guns in battle. Did you encounter or observe any of that?

NS: No, no.

KP: Everyone in your squad pretty much fired their rifles?

NS: It felt good, I imagine, to shoot a gun. No. Yeah, I saw that story in the paper the other day.

KP: It sounds like you are a little skeptical of that.

NS: I'm a little skeptical. You fire your gun, because, in my war, anyhow, you did that because it felt good, I guess.

. . . .

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