MIA
In early October, my father got a letter from the War Department:
Dear Mr. Langrehr:
As promised you, I am writing again regarding your son, Private First Class Henry O. Langrehr. . . .
It has been my fervent hope that favorable information would be forthcoming and that you might be relieved from the great anxiety which you have borne during these months. It is therefore with deep regret that I must state that no further report in his case has been forwarded to the War Department.
I want to again emphasize the fact that the Commanding Generals in all our theaters of Operations are making a continuous effort to establish the actual status of personnel who have been reported as missing, or missing in action. In many instances the War Department must rely upon the reports by a belligerent government through the International Red Cross for information.
You may be certain that when any information is received, it will be promptly transmitted to you. In the event no additional information is received within the next three months, I will again communicate with you.
Sincerely yours,
J. A. Ulio
Major General,
The Adjutant General.
I can’t imagine how Arlene would have felt when she heard the news.
Helpless?
Angry?
Baffled?
Yet always when asked about me being MIA, she replied simply that she was sure I was still alive, and would be home soon.
Arlene was still working with her mother at the local factory making the stands for machine guns. As long as the days were, Arlene was proud to be doing something for the war effort. Sometimes I think she was superhuman, doing all that; she just smiles when someone mentions the amount of work or strain. It wasn’t so unusual; people at home wanted to do something that contributed to the war effort.
There were other reasons. Money was one; the factories were paying well. Others had to do with wishing the war would be over quickly, and maybe helping that come true. Some were patriotism, and national spirit. And there was a feeling of being in it together, working hard side by side with other people doing the same.
The home front was not a perfect place; evil didn’t suddenly disappear. There would be plenty of investigations later into war profiteering that had hurt soldiers while enriching a few. Still, the overall feeling among most people was one of cooperation and pulling together for the good of the country.
* * *
Besides working hard, Arlene must also have been tempted by the young soldiers who passed through the hospital or town on business. I’d bet more than a few were better looking than me.
But she stayed true, just knowing that I was coming home.
I’ve asked her about it many times since, looking maybe for some magic formula or a hidden knowledge. Her answer has always been the same:
I just knew.
She prayed, and she went to church, but as important as her faith was to her, she just knew I was coming home no matter how many prayers she said or didn’t. She could no more doubt that than she could forget her own name.
There must have been temptations galore. There were many local dances sponsored by different groups, and a lot of times for fun, Arlene and an aunt would go along to them. The two women would dance together, which was the custom if you didn’t want to attract undue male attention. But the attractive young woman with the fashionable curl in her hair would still be asked by handsome bachelors if she wanted to take a turn with them; she always turned them down.
Rationing was in full effect. Items needed for the war effort were in very short supply, but the shortages included things you wouldn’t think of—food, for example. Sugar and flour were important staples—but to get them, you needed coupons. If you lived on a farm or had enough land for a garden, then you grew and canned vegetables and fruit. Otherwise, canned goods were often the only thing you could find, and you generally needed coupons to buy them. Coffee, too. Gasoline and fuel oil for heating were limited as well.
The rules could be complex. There were “red foods” and “blue foods,” which corresponded to the coupons that could be used to purchase each—assuming you could find them. If you stayed in a hospital for more than ten days, you had to turn your coupon book in. When someone died, the family’s stamp allocation was reduced. In theory, families were issued coupons based on their needs, but that often didn’t cover what you needed or at least wanted. Having a large family and a group of friends could help. Arlene and her family would trade or give coupons to each other to make up for shortfalls—even though it was against the rules.
Soup was a favorite meal. It stretched the small amount of meat, and it was versatile, since it could be made with whatever vegetables you had at hand.
Arlene’s dad got gasoline coupons, but because his truck was old—it started with a hand crank, which even by 1940 would have made it long obsolete—he rarely drove it. He would give gasoline stamps he didn’t need to others who did. Fortunately, the bus service in Clinton was very good.
Often, people who lived in town and around our county would just walk to where they needed to go. Arlene and her mother walked to work though it was a half-mile away, and thought nothing of walking even ten miles to see someone if the weather wasn’t against them.
Recycling metals and even cooking fats was standard. Every tin can was potentially a munition—or so it was said.
The government started price controls to keep people from gouging, and to try to keep inflation down. That worked a bit, but prices always seemed to be rising. Black markets for goods sprung up around the country, where people would buy goods without coupons but with very high prices. If there were any in Clinton, though, our families didn’t know about them—and they didn’t have the money to spare, besides.
* * *
Arlene’s father got a job in a local factory canning corn during the early days of the war. But something happened there—apparently someone took offense because he was German—and he quit and never went back. Instead, he ended up as an Electrolux salesman, going door-to-door hawking vacuums.
Sales were tough during the war. His wife would watch out the window when he came home, trying to guess from his stride if he’d sold anything that day—no sales, no pay.
As they grew older, Arlene’s brothers joined the service, as did mine.
* * *
On the coasts, cities and towns had air raid drills, with varying degrees of success. Children went to school with tags on their clothes to identify themselves and their parents in case the worst happened. At night, wardens walked the streets yelling at people to put out their lights; they worried that they would guide German or Japanese bombers to a target.
The newspapers and radio stations carried information from the fronts. Much of the news was heavily censored, in an effort to keep from giving information to the enemy somehow. The most reliable thing in the papers were the lists of the dead.
MARKETGARDEN AND THE BULGE
A lot had happened in the war since my capture.
Hampered by German defenses and the unfamiliar terrain, our troops had bogged down in the bocage by early July. After several attempts at a breakthrough, First Army launched a massive offensive in the area of Saint-Lô. Obliterating frontline defenses with an innovative, massive bombing attack—strategic bombers were used as artillery would have—our guys broke through the German defenses. Troops poured down the Cotentin Peninsula, beginning a rout. General George Patton’s Third Army, freshly arrived from Great Britain, joined in. The Germans were pummeled in a mass exodus from the Falaise Pocket. Paris was liberated by the French, with a great deal of American help, on August 24.
By then, a second front had been opened in France. Operation Dragoon launched the U.S. 7th Army into the area east of Marseille. The force leapt northward, striking toward the Rhone River and forcing the Germans back in the direction of the Black Forest and Rhine River.
By the end of August, our troops stood at the border of Germany. General Bradley argued for an assault across the border, aiming to punch quickly to Berlin. Backed by First Army general Courtney Hodges and Patton (Bradley as army group commander was their boss, but he worked closely with both), Bradley proposed a lightning strike that would hit Germany before the country could organize its defenses. He also suggested obliterating everything in their path, aiming to do to German civilians what their armies had imposed on the rest of the world.
Whatever effect that might have had, neither Bradley’s suggestion nor his plan to cross into Germany was adopted.
* * *
The 82nd Airborne had been moved out of the bocage and onto Utah Beach July 11. Seventeen LSTs—massive landing ships designed to move tanks—transported the division back to England.
That sounds like a lot, but in fact the unit had been drained of manpower. Before our jump, the 82nd’s head count was roughly 11,770, all in—counting officers and enlisted, “regular” paratroopers, and all the men in the attached units.
About a tenth of the division—1,142—had been killed. Another 2,373 were wounded. And 840 were missing or captured.
I was one of them.
The 82nd had spent a little more than a month in combat. They spent the next two months refitting, filling their ranks with replacements for the lost men, and preparing for the next battle.
Which began September 17.
* * *
Rather than following the plan Bradley and his lieutenants had proposed, Eisenhower endorsed a plan favored by Montgomery code-named MarketGarden. In brief, the idea was to cross the Rhine in the north, opening a way to Berlin. If successful, it would get around the German defenses known as the Siegfried Line. This was a massive series of defenses, originally built across from the French Maginot Line, a similar stretch of bunkers and heavy defenses intended to stop an enemy advance.
The German defenses included thousands of bunkers, tank traps, obstacles, and other defenses that made a quick ground attack and breakthrough difficult, if not impossible. The line had been reinforced and extended following the start of the war and again after D-Day. It extended on German soil from the Netherlands south to Switzerland.
It did not, however, extend all the way to the North Sea. It might be possible, therefore, to bypass it by attacking in the northern Netherlands, crossing the Rhine, and driving down into Germany from the north.
This was not as easy as it might sound. Much of the terrain had been flooded, and there were several rivers in the area that could be used as defense points, with a limited number of easily guarded crossings.
Following their return to England, the 82nd, the 101st, and the as-yet-untested 17th Airborne Divisions were joined with British airborne troops to form the First Airborne Allied Army. This command had planned several actions, but none were carried out because of the rapid change in ground conditions. Basically, our armies were moving so fast that the plans became obsolete before the jumps could be made.
Three divisions from the First Airborne Army—the 82nd, the 101st, and the British 1st Airborne Division, along with Polish troops and some supporting units—would take the lead. Just under 35,000 men would parachute or land by glider in the Netherlands, behind the lines of the German 84th Army Corps, seizing and holding key bridges that ran through the area. Highway 69, a key north-south route, would be taken by the troops, putting the major artery in Allied hands.
The airborne operation was the “Market” portion of the plan. It was to be followed by “Garden.” A British Army corps would come north through the areas taken by the paratroopers, starting with the region west of Valkenwaard attacked by the 101st. By Day Two, they would arrive in the area secured by the 82nd, roughly around Grave and including a long bridge at Nijmegen. Two days later, they would arrive at the British positions in the far north, which included a major bridge at Arnhem. At that point, the attack would pivot over the crossings seized at Arnhem, breaking east through whatever German defenses had mustered there.
It was an ambitious plan. Aside from the success of the airborne attacks, it depended on the ground troops’ ability to use Highway 69. While much of the area along the sides of the highway had been flooded or was too marshy to support vehicles, resistance along the highway route was expected to be light.
Things went well at first. Unlike most operations to this point in the war, a large portion of the airborne troops landed on target. My division, the 82nd, took most of their objectives—but failed to take the bridge at Nijmegen. Though they were able to control part of the bridgehead, the British were turned back at Arnhem, largely because the initial force aiming to take the city was too small. These two failures set the stage for what followed.
The Germans brought heavy reinforcements into the northern areas, cutting off British units. They secured Arnhem, cut off the British soldiers who had reached the bridgehead, and devastated attempts to resupply the division by air. By the end of the fourth day, the British survivors at the Arnhem bridgehead, out of ammunition and in many cases wounded, were captured.
In the meantime, the 82nd, joined by British ground forces, had taken Nijmegen. But it was too late. The Germans were able to block attempts to reach the British airborne troops farther north. In the south, troops taking Highway 69 were pummeled by artillery that had the road zeroed in. The British finally had to withdraw, crossing back over the southern bank of the Rhine after heavy losses. After withstanding a German counterattack, the 82nd hunkered down.
* * *
The 82nd was relieved on November 10. Some troops marched some twenty miles in the rain and an early snow before rendezvousing with trucks that were to remove them from the battle zone. They had spent a remarkable fifty days in combat, far longer than planned and an unusually long time for an airborne unit.
They were ready for a rest, and more. Their stay in the Low Countries had been costly, though after the fighting settled down the Dutch citizens proved as welcoming as the French had been. Now they were ready for some R&R in France.
It didn’t last long.
A number of men were still on leave December 16, when news came that shocked Americans, not just those in uniform but nearly everyone back home. The Germans, thought to now to be on their deathbeds, had managed to launch a surprise attack in Belgium.
The American command was taken completely off guard. While a secret system of intercepting and decrypting German communication nicknamed Ultra had provided excellent intelligence to this point in the war, somehow it and the entire intelligence community had missed the fact that three German armies with half a million men, over five hundred tanks, and another 650 self-propelled guns and tank destroyers had massed in the Ardennes Forest. Taking advantage of bad weather and attacking a front so quiet it was called “the Ghost Front,” the Germans galloped through the American lines. By the night of December 18, their armies threatened the headquarters of the American Corps commander overseeing the area at Bastogne.
Desperate to stem the German advance, the Allies threw their best troops into the battle—including the 82nd and 101st.
There was a time when every schoolkid in America knew what happened next; I suspect a lot still do. The 101st arrived at Bastogne in the nick of time, fending off the Germans and refusing to surrender even when surrounded. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, acting commander of the 101st, sent back a one-word reply to the Germans when told his force was surrounded and they must surrender:
“Nuts!”
The paratroopers held out until the day after Christmas, when a column of tanks and ground soldiers from Patton’s army to the south broke through the defenses and relieved them.
The 101st was justly celebrated for their bravery in the harsh fight. But the 82nd deserves credit, too, for their efforts in the north.
Like the 101st, the 82nd arrived in trucks, driving through pouring rain and sleet. Where the 101st had assembled near Bastogne, the 82nd arrived at Werbomont. From there the troops moved forward to bridges that sat in the path of the Germans, blocked the Germans from capturing Trois Ponts, and fought a tough battle at Cheneux.
Stalled by tougher American resistance than they had hoped for, the Germans had already outrun their supply lines. They were far short of their objectives, Antwerp and Brussels. Most units hadn’t even pushed beyond the Outhre River, west of Bastogne. Marche, a key city in the center of the bulge, remained in American hands. As the weather cleared, the fight shifted abruptly. With fresh troops arriving almost every hour and the cloud moving on so that fighter-bombers could join the fight, the Germans were doomed. Trying to regain momentum, they tried a counterattack in January, but failed. American armies on both sides of the salient began rolling them back.
Many men fought hard in the Bulge, not just the paratroopers. There had been about a quarter million American soldiers in the sector when the attack began; by the middle of January, there were over seven hundred thousand. The Germans were down to about two hundred tanks, many with barely enough fuel to get back to the German border. Our side had almost twenty-five hundred, with thousands more armored vehicles and guns. Twenty-two infantry divisions and eight armored divisions made up the core of the Allied force.
So a lot of guys participated. Not just the paratroopers. The Germans had gambled that they would catch the Allies off guard, and win either time to keep fighting, or even be able to sue for peace.
Instead, losing the gamble, they deprived themselves of weapons and men that might have been used on German soil.
The cost to us was not trivial. Between 75,000 and 90,000 American soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured during the Bulge battles. That’s a sizable percentage of the 500,000 casualties we suffered from D-Day onward.
More than 23,000 of those casualties were men taken prisoner. The Germans began marching them back to Germany, sending some to camps as bad as mine. In other cases, they were simply marched and transported around; the Germans had no place to put them.
* * *
Sometimes, they saved themselves the trouble.
On December 17, near the start of the offensive, eighty-four American soldiers who had surrendered were murdered by German SS troops, who began firing machine guns at them when they were assembled in a field. The incident became known as the Malmedy Massacre. It was later learned that the unit responsible for the murders was an SS troop, and word of it quickly spread through the troops.
Rumors about what happened at Malmedy circulated among troops at the front almost immediately. The incident sparked retaliation killings, especially of SS men. It is said that several commanders issued orders that prisoners would not be taken—in other words, kill anyone who tried to surrender.
But while it became infamous, the Malmedy Massacre was only one of many cases where soldiers trying to surrender were cut down, either a few at a time or en masse. It happened in Normandy, it happened at the Bulge; it must have happened everywhere in between and beyond.
* * *
Until the Battle of the Bulge, the Allied command had considered the war all but won. A lot of the public back home did, too. The German onslaught, which was reported in detail by reporters who were in the area when it began, changed that. The confidence that they had felt evaporated. As the honor roll of the dead increased in the weekly newspaper listings, people realized that the war could go on for a lot longer, increasing the odds that their loved one would someday join the list.
ALIVE
Sometime in November—the exact date now seems impossible to determine, but our best guess is mid-month, before Thanksgiving—my parents received a brief notice saying that I was in fact alive, and that I was a prisoner of war.
How exactly the information got out—maybe through the International Red Cross and the German hospital—I have no idea. But the Army considered it reliable enough to take me off the MIA list and declare me alive.
I would guess it made them feel somewhat more hopeful.
What they would have thought had they known fully what that meant—what I was witnessing, what those around me were going through—I can’t begin to say.
And truthfully, even I didn’t know yet what the price of survival would be.