Another River, Another Town by John P. Irwin

Author:John P. Irwin [Irwin, John P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58836-106-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

A LESSON IN DEPRAVITY

There is no way under God’s heaven that any of us could have been prepared for what the eleventh of April presented to us when we entered the city of Nordhausen. Nordhausen was the location of Germany’s major assembly plant for the infamous V-rockets that had rained so much destruction on London and were expected eventually to reach even to Washington, D.C. What we saw there changed the whole way we thought about the war. The weather was cloudy, damp, and chilly—downright depressing. But the weather’s mood perfectly reflected what we encountered in this place. By the city lay a camp that contained the barracks for slave laborers. The camp was known by the SS as Lager Nordhausen. General Boudinot himself entered the camp with the first tanks. Our tank was among them. There was virtually no resistance here, and it immediately became clear to us why we had met so much resistance at Espchenrode.

The first thing that greeted us were hundreds of semi-living men wearing filthy, ragged, striped prison uniforms, some standing, some crouched and trying to comprehend what was happening. And then we saw the dead and dying, lying naked in rows and heaps that reeked of human putrefaction. The stink of rotting human bodies impregnated my nasal passages, indelibly imprinting them with its sickening fetor. That hideous smell was something I will never forget, no matter how long I might live. This incredible stench made breathing a chore and brought us all to the point of nausea.

At one end of the camp hundreds of dead bodies were stacked, naked, like cordwood ready for the fire, and many hundreds more were lying in the parade ground between the barracks, laid out as though prepared for some sort of macabre full-field inspection. Yet worse than the dead were the half-dead, men who understood what was happening but were too weak to rejoice.

Also standing around the perimeter were SS prison guards, their weapons in the dirt in front of them, their hands on their heads. The report of several rounds of rifle fire indicated that some GIs couldn’t control themselves, and General Boudinot gave the order to cease fire. Two Nazi guards had been killed, even though they were surrendering. The rest appeared ready to grab their weapons again to protect themselves.

“These are German prisoners of war,” shouted General Boudinot, “and we treat them as such. The next man to fire on an unarmed person will be in violation of the Articles of War and will be summarily executed! We are not like them!” he shouted, pointing to the SS guards.

At that point, those prisoners who could came toward us, smiling as best they were able. General Boudinot was surrounded by a group of them who tried fruitlessly to hoist him to their shoulders. We got out of our tanks and, despite the nauseating odor, started to wander around the compound, gazing in horror and disbelief. The air was filled not only with the odor of putrefaction

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