|
History Matters: Few know of World War II massacre in Salina (Utah)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| ogvh5150 |
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
George Santayana
| quote: | Article Last Updated: 11/27/2005 01:21:09 AM
History Matters: Few know of World War II massacre in Salina
Pat Bagley
Salt Lake Tribune
The sound of machine-gun fire jolted the young lieutenant from his cot. He stumbled outside, trying to make sense of the pandemonium that greeted him. Screams and moans carried clearly through the night as the chattering gun stopped. Glancing up at the guard tower, he saw smoke rising from the gun barrel.
He looked in horror at the riddled tents of German POWs. He shouted to the guard to cease fire - too late - and to come down.
"Send up more ammo!" the guard shouted back. "I'm not done yet!"
***
Walking past the Fort Douglas Military Cemetery two weeks ago, I witnessed a wreath-laying ceremony by men in uniform. Wondering why someone was celebrating Veterans' Day two days late, I introduced myself and ran into a problem. The group was chatting among themselves in German.
The uniforms, which I had thought were American, were German Air Force. Capt. Fritz Goothuis, the liaison officer at Hill Air Force Base, explained that the stone monument in the southwest corner memorializes German POWs who died in Utah.
With the help of Goothuis, the Internet and old copies of the Salt Lake Telegram, I pieced together some of the local history of POWs. Utah was home to about 7,000 Italian and 8,000 German POWs from 1944 to '45. The Germans, most of them tough veterans of Rommel's Afrikacorp, were kept in a dozen compounds, most in the northwest corner of the state.
Utah was also the site of a prisoner massacre.
In July 1945, 250 German POWs were in Salina to help with the harvest. They were housed in wooden floored tents watched over by three guard towers.
Beyond the occasional hard-core Nazis who carved swastikas into peaches, the Germans were mostly well behaved. A farmer's three-year-old girl once wandered in among the laboring Germans. The farmer found that she'd been picked up and was held by a prisoner. Alarmed, he asked for the girl. The German at first refused to surrender the child. Then the farmer saw the man had tears in his eyes and realized "he had a child of his own back home that he thought he would maybe never see again."
On July 7, after a full day of work in Salina's beet fields, the Germans were marched back to their compound. Following the evening meal, they went to their tents to sleep.
At midnight, the guard changed. Pvt. Clarence V. Bertucci climbed into the tower nearest the camp commander's office. Bertucci, a native of New Orleans, had a record of minor infractions of military discipline, but nothing serious.
Bertucci waited a few minutes for the previous watch to find their beds. Then he opened an ammunition box containing a belt of 250 bullets, slapped the belt securely into the tower's machine gun, and swung the loaded weapon toward the tents of sleeping POWs.
Thirty seconds after pulling the trigger the belt was exhausted.
Nine POWs were killed. The wounded were taken to the Salina hospital where it's remembered that blood flowed out the front door. One prisoner, nearly cut in half, would survive six hours.
Bertucci went quietly with a soldier who was ordered to bring him down.
Asked why he had gunned down the prisoners, he expressed a hatred of Nazis. He showed no remorse at a later hearing. The Army declared Bertucci insane and committed him to a mental institution.
Criminal under any circumstances, these killings were especially senseless. Germany had surrendered two months before. The Germans picking beets in Salina were the sons of a defeated nation in U.S. Army custody waiting to be shipped home.
The local papers didn't dwell on the tragedy. News space was taken up with fresh stories of Nazi atrocities just coming to light. News of the killings never made it to Germany where the populace was still picking through the ruins of their homes. The families wouldn't be informed until 1948 about what happened in Salina.
Two of those who were wounded returned to Utah in 1988 to witness the rededication of the German War Memorial. It was on Nov. 13, the second Sunday of the month when Germans commemorate Volkstrauertag, their national day of mourning.
---
Pat Bagley is the editorial cartoonist for The Salt Lake Tribune. |
|
|
|
| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
|
Wow (I guess in a sad sort of way)
You learn something new everyday! Thanks, ogvh5150! |
|
|
| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
Wow (I guess in a sad sort of way)
You learn something new everyday! Thanks, ogvh5150! |
And we are supposed to be supporting our troops and the humanitarianism they show towards Iraqis and other non-combatants. |
|
|
| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
And we are supposed to be supporting our troops and the humanitarianism they show towards Iraqis and other non-combatants. |
I'm in full support of our troops, it's the war that I strongly disagree with. I think the great majority of our guys mean well - it's just that a few bad apples tend to spoil the whole barrel, which is really unfortunate.
I know a small handfull of G.I.'s that returned from combat totally disillusioned by what they saw over there, who figured out from the get-go what this war was all about. A couple were tasked to secure Iraq's oil pipelines instead of the (since looted) stockpiles of munitions, explosives, etc. Yes, it's a matter of National Security that we preserve Iraq's oil infrastructure - because that's what much of the war is about - preserving that exact interest. |
|
|
| shaolin_Z |
| Very sad indeed. :( |
|
|
| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
Yes, it's a matter of National Security that we preserve Iraq's oil infrastructure - because that's what much of the war is about - preserving that exact interest.[/color] |
regardless of the US' intentions, the protection of iraq's oil supply & infrastructure is paramount to the country's rebuilding and its future. protecting those interests does not, in and of itself, represent oil as the motive of the war (not that im saying it wasnt).
as for the thread's article, i hardly see 1 crazy who lost it as really significant. to me, \"massacre\" in this context raised images of state-sponsored murder. its awful indeed, but a lot less awful than comparable acts in that decade. |
|
|
| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
regardless of the US' intentions, the protection of iraq's oil supply & infrastructure is paramount to the country's rebuilding and its future. protecting those interests does not, in and of itself, represent oil as the motive of the war (not that im saying it wasnt).
as for the thread's article, i hardly see 1 crazy who lost it as really significant. to me, \"massacre\" in this context raised images of state-sponsored murder. its awful indeed, but a lot less awful than comparable acts in that decade. |
Yeah, I see what you are saying. However, troops were given orders not to talk about what they had to do in the course of securing said oil fields and pipelines, that it was a matter of U.S. National Security to secure those Iraqi fields - while in the meantime TONS of high explosives were being looted from unguarded compounds. In my eyes (and those of a few soldiers that I talked to) that more or less defines our true objectives - especially given the fact that Dubya's family had been trying to do business in Iraq since the mid-80's.
Well, there's noone holding them back now. |
|
|
| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
I'm in full support of our troops, it's the war that I strongly disagree with. I think the great majority of our guys mean well - it's just that a few bad apples tend to spoil the whole barrel, which is really unfortunate.
I know a small handfull of G.I.'s that returned from combat totally disillusioned by what they saw over there, who figured out from the get-go what this war was all about. A couple were tasked to secure Iraq's oil pipelines instead of the (since looted) stockpiles of munitions, explosives, etc. Yes, it's a matter of National Security that we preserve Iraq's oil infrastructure - because that's what much of the war is about - preserving that exact interest. |
You cannot enlist without expecting to kill. No one can get in and get out unscathed. It doesn't work that way. People enlist because they feel that they're "doing the right thing". I didn't pimp GI Joe into signing up. That's the recruiters job.
You might as well argue that combat troops aren't killers. Yeah big thumbs up for them. Big thumbs up. |
|
|
| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
You cannot enlist without expecting to kill. No one can get in and get out unscathed. It doesn't work that way. People enlist because they feel that they're "doing the right thing". I didn't pimp GI Joe into signing up. That's the recruiters job.
You might as well argue that combat troops aren't killers. Yeah big thumbs up for them. Big thumbs up. |
That's a tough call, though. Most of the guys that I know who have enlisted never expected that they'd be called upon to fight someone else's dirty wars. They seemed to think that they were more or less going to be serving the defensive interests of our country, rather than the offensive.
Remember, up until more recently our country had never really engaged in any large scale "preemptive" attacks on anyone. |
|
|
| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
That's a tough call, though. Most of the guys that I know who have enlisted never expected that they'd be called upon to fight someone else's dirty wars. They seemed to think that they were more or less going to be serving the defensive interests of our country, rather than the offensive. |
See how it works now?
If you were a drug addict who do you blame? You, the seller or the drugs?
No one forced you to be a drug addict. You chose to grab the pipe. You chose to convince yourself that you can do it alone before you hit bottom scraping by on dumpster dining.
| quote: | | Remember, up until more recently our country had never really engaged in any large scale "preemptive" attacks on anyone. |
Might I remind you about The Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century? Does that ring a bell? Or what about Shock And Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance?
They should be since these texts were written before any so called preemptions were to take place.
This is not about accidental history because no such thing exists, you should have known this by now. |
|
|
| Trancer-X |
That's not a very good analogy, though. Serving your country really cannot be equated to consuming noxious or illicit substances.
Anyway, how many people do you really think knew about PNAC or any of those other think tanks' agendas or proposed policies before 9/11? Very few. How many people do you think actually foresaw the shift of direction in our foreign policy during the last five or ten years? I'm also willing to say that it was only a small minority who were really in the know. |
|
|
|
|
