johnny walker. , where our the south headquarters were for johnny heinz got hit. had 39 operations after the war. they built him a nose and he could wear dark glasses. lip.d his lower he did not have anything up here. 2000, the last reunion of the sixth army. i want to show you something i think is an interesting -- what do you think about these -- i am not on here now, right? these folks giving these people the miranda warning. look at that picture. .e captured 8000 germans all we did was disarm them, separate the officers from the men and march them down the esplanade of the autobahn. we were moving north and they were moving south to a pow collecting point. you think we could have given them the miranda warning? [indiscernible] >> it would have taken forever. benjamin: provide each one of them counsel? [laughter] [indiscernible] photograph.us benjamin: that was us. we had, we actually had, you can going had tank task force this way, this is a truck with one of the battalions. i thought that was very interesting circumstance. i messed that one up. i didn't expect that. >> you are all right. tell me about capturing mulhouse and. benjamin: we had a good fight. it was a pretty important political town apparently because they had a lot of german flags and materials, so forth. i got some flags and daggers and things like that and memorabilia. was just a spotty resistance. i mean it is a serious resistance, but when you measure in the magnitude of major armor operation, i don't think it was quite that heavy. it was important. hausen was a pretty network.d road i was looking at a map that we had of it. important -- it was important for that reason. it was important because it disorganized the german resistance when it was captured. that't recall that we, general grow had the casualty figures there. we always had casualties only got into a fight. with the concept of armor was to engagements.ve to -- the soldier phrase for it was bypass and haul ass. , we would have roadblocks and things like that. there would be things like muhlahausen where you would have a substantial fight. that was one of the last major fights we had, although we had river crossing problems. the germans were very astute at making defensive positions along river crossings. whenever we got a bridge, it was a bonanza event. every bridge we did not have to achievement.reat it facilitated in time, facilitated movement and eliminated casualties that are incurred when you have to fight for a bridgehead. those are always spots good commanders have in mind. general grow was as diligent about to it -- casualties and wounded and troop well-being and any officer i ever encountered. and we went pretty fast and to buchenwald main camp, where they had the ovens and so forth, was secured by us but we didn't have to -- the camp personnel by the time we got there, the germans had evacuated. they had flown. it was an interesting circumstance. we were moving so fast, we heard that buchenwald had been captured from the ninth infantry battalion which was our south flank. what happened was one of the flank patrols moving east was signaled i think by two germans, some russians who had been in buchenwald. this was a camp that was north west of weimar. in. had the patrol came didn't have to fight, but they were overwhelmed by the joy and enthusiasm and freedom feeling of the occupants of the camp. they heard -- i heard this was that --, the commanders throwing in the air with blankets or something, but they had a heckuva time getting out of this lodging and advancing to the east. wasn't it, but i present. we went on. we went on. the mcured crossings over and the one that mit weine is on. we put our cp in the river at mittweida. they were very concerned about us getting in the firefight with the russians accidentally. to a place called wasberg i believe, which 15, 20 miles maybe east, southeast of mittweida looking for the russians. this was no man's country. i never found them until later they came drifting in at the time. they were something else. invited to, we were the soviets, one of the day with for lunch one a real -- vodka flowing liberally. they consume it just incredibly. we could not keep up with that. but they had reached our front. we had pulled back from mit tweida. by may the eighth, they were on the other side of the river. v-e day, they had fired guns over the roof, houses on our side, all of that kind of celebrations. we ultimately withdrew, went beyond -- is believe the boundary was the mulda river, which was back from where we had crossed and into assembly areas of the war was over. >> tell me more about the buchenwald concentration camp. benjamin: we did not go there the day it was captured. our division immediately went to arrangingnd started hospital accommodations for the victims at the plant. base --s a german air see if i can tell you. urg, but have an army of german air base. they had hospital facilities. he converted those facilities through our division medical battalion. worked on reviving, restoring and rehabilitating those poor victims. we visited nine days after we captured buchenwald, the hospital and later in the day went to the camp itself where the ovens were, the crematorium. was theg that struck me only way some of those victims would be identified as a live was they were slowly, and in great intervals blink their eyes. they could not. they were skin and bones. it was very shattering. how long did you stay when you visited? benjamin: maybe 30 minutes. they were not talking. they were on serious injection infusion of fluids. they could not eat. they had to be fed intravenously. it was a major medical operation. when they were able to evacuate them, they would. but for the division with a single medical battalion, we had our own problem. we were no longer having battle casualties but to have attrition from other medical problems. occupiedal battalion's with, and they have to maintain a field hospital or something sort of like that. branch, ourr. medical doctor from arkansas, did a remarkable job of organizing and providing sustenance and care for those people. crematorium was a macabre experience as you can imagine. and thus ended the war. >> did you stay on occupation duty? benjamin: yes, i did. general grow, at the end of the war, general grow was always interested in another assignment . ateral patton had, we were the canal -- from where we had -- not far from where we had crossed the rhine. we went down to see general july --n early june or i guess early july. headquarters of third army was at that time in bavaria , south of munich. general patton had occupied a villa that had been owned by the publisher of hitler's "mein kampf," and he made that his headquarters, his personal headquarters. there and wentn to army headquarters first, and forn down there, and stayed at dinner. having his conversation. general smith, who commanded the and division, was there, guess, and ofig course general patton. as he waxing again, usually would in those occasions. i was lucky to be there. he had just come back from the continental u.s., and said he had a visit with the president, and an exchange with the president. the president asked, general, what do you think of the non-fraternization rule enforced in europe? president, i, mr. don't think it's worth a good god-damn. i don't know if that's what he told the president, but that's what he told us. [laughter] president truman said, i don't, either, general, we'll stop it. it was came back, over. inton asked for a command the pacific. why,id, i can't tell you but this war will be over soon. sorrytton of course was about that. grow was sorry about it. glad, because i didn't want to go to the pacific. [laughter] that heay, he then said had told us, and i know he told a story about, we did not bring you over here to sacrifice your life, get killed. we came over here to kill the germans. i know this is a story he must have told before, at least once in his memoirs. meyer, ast to fort commander of a cavalry regiment, which had duty as a ceremonial regimen and an active military cavalry regiment, in the 1930's, he said, bea, beatrice, his wife, and he went to chapel, their first sunday there. they were very religious. theaid, we went down to chapel, and the chaplain spoke aid,almost an hour, and he s monday morning i called the chaplain in and said, chaplain, you don't have a damn thing to say that you can't say in five or 10 minutes. and so next sunday, he says we went down to chapel, bea and i, up to the front row, and when the chaplain started peeking out his head, he said i put up my watch and laid it over my leg, and he said in 10 minutes he was through speaking, and he said, i think i taught him a lesson. that's where i end my speech, overdue. would, it was customary to have a division follow us and take over extremely occupied, defended areas, because our mission was to move, and bypass, get around the enemy. on the, i can't find any support for this other than my memory, which mayt not be the best in te world, but i do remember that general grow had problems with the 76th not following us fast enough. we were moving so fast east when would make 10, 15 miles a day, and it was important for us to get these occupied areas that were defended contained, because we had logistics. we had supplies to move up, rations, ammo, fuels, new brookins -- lubricants. empty trucks, resupply vehicles, wouded. -- wounded. so it was always important these more heavily fortified areas be contained by the following infantry unit. i remember general grow calling evening, and i think that's in his diary. i didn't get time to check that. the 76thmplains about division not following close, and also that division was commanded by general william schmidt, who was the same night at the villa, after the war. he was the only other non-official general on the staff. remember patton coming down, and we had a map on the hood of the jeep. patton and schmidt and general i'm met and schmidt said, having trouble keeping up because my flanks are exposed. so patton says, don't worry about your damn flanks. you have a flank, the germans have one, too, so you get moving. my curiosity, i've got to check that. were around these generals a lot. they were having meetings. were you privy to a lot of major disagreements? you mentioned a disagreement here and there. benjamin: oh, no. you know, there's a certain mystique about being a general. was, i was never privy to it, because i never was a general. [laughter] but generals are very discreet, usually, and very discreet about criticizing each other publicly. when they have disagreements, and one general is senior to another, they might relieve that general, but you don't hear a lot of bad talk or any, any indiscreet comments. i never did. the only thing i heard was things like, when general patton -- as heng about called it. [laughter] good name, really. when montgomery's son, ambrose had that d-day remembrance in 1984. but i don't recall anything like that. aneral grow relieved brigadier general who commanded one of our combat commands. i never heard him say anything except something like, maybe he's not doing what i told him, or something like that, and he relieved him, wrote a letter to him and discussed relieving him with the corps commander. mccoy did it, in discussion with taylor. taylor told not get follow orders. at lease that was his appraisal. was his appraisal. he sent taylor back with a letter, saying he relieved him, and he went back to the states as a colonel. ever got muchhe of a command of any sort. generalalk a lot about grow. you talk a little about patton. and you talked a little off-camera. what was your impression of general patton, overall? benjamin: i think he was an outstanding general. i'll tell you what. from patton's aapers, for example, pertinent example. in england, and about the time patton had made his talk, maybe at that time, p atton told grow we were a far batter division than either the -- far better division than either the fourth or fifth armored division, and he wanted one of those division commanders, and i will not mention his name because i don't want to embarrass him, to, he was going to go have the corps commander, at that time johnny walker of the 20th corps, he called him sometimes "fast walker," not to his face, but in his memoirs he referred to "fat walker." he wanted walker to take this division commander for a visit. he told him, i want you to show him around, because i want him to see a good division. i want, in a few days, you to go visit this general don't want him to know what i feel about the situation. i thought that was very discreet. patton was critical of collins and bradley for relieving officers too quickly, but he was always on the ground. he was on the ground, when a unit was going into combat for the first time. he would be on the ground, seeing what's going on, criticizing. he did that to us. for example, when we jumped off, we had a combat command "a," held up at a river crossing because of a blown bridge. there was, when patton got down there, it had tidewater. a at flood tide, it'd be problem. so patton said, when they started, it was flood tide i think, they started to build a bridge and th
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