Texas Liberators - J. Ted Hartman (May 17, 2012)

SLOAN: This is Stephen Sloan. The date is May 17, 2012. I'm with Dr. J. Ted Hartman in his home in Lubbock, Texas. This is an interview with Dr. Hartman for the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission's Texas Liberators Project. And Robert DeBoard is here as my videographer for this interview. Thank you, Dr. Hartman, for sitting down with us today, letting us rearrange your living room so we could have this conversation. I want to begin in DeRidder. If you could tell me a little bit about your early life there in Louisiana. You were telling me a little bit about your family. What are some of your earliest memories there?

HARTMAN: Well, DeRidder was a sawmill town essentially, but was settled fairly 00:01:00heavily by the Cajun people coming over from the eastern part of Louisiana. Partially Cajun, but it was a very much of old South influence, and I would say about a third of the population was Negro--was black. Then maybe a third was Cajun, and then the other 40 percent was white. Everybody--all homes had a black cook. The black and Cajuns intermarried to a considerable extent. The cooking was very influenced by the Cajuns. No cookbooks, so they all carried it in their head, but the food that we ate was really very good. I just thought that was the normal for everybody. When we moved from there to Iowa, I had no idea that 00:02:00people ate food like that.

SLOAN: (Sloan laughs) Potatoes and corn and that sort of stuff, yeah.

HARTMAN: Yeah, it was just sort of flat.

SLOAN: Well, when people think of Iowa, they don't think of the cuisine.

HARTMAN: No, that's exactly right.

SLOAN: But South Louisiana, they do think of the cuisine.

HARTMAN: That's exactly right.

SLOAN: Now, what did your father do? What was his profession?

HARTMAN: He was a professor of forestry at Iowa State University--then Iowa State College.

SLOAN: I see.

HARTMAN: He was manager of a creosote [wood preservation] plant in DeRidder. That was why--he had come south from Iowa having graduated from Iowa State College, and he had met my mother who was teaching school. She had graduated 00:03:00from Louisiana Normal College in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

SLOAN: Now Northwestern, I guess.

HARTMAN: Yes, it is now Northwestern. That's correct.

SLOAN: So you had said that her family had long roots in Louisiana.

HARTMAN: That is right, yeah.

SLOAN: So he took her to Iowa?

HARTMAN: Right, yes. (Sloan laughs) He took her to Iowa, and she actually became very fond of Iowa and became very happy in Ames because of the intellectual element from the university.

SLOAN: I know this is--when did you move from Louisiana?

HARTMAN: We moved--I was ten years old. It was in 1935 when we moved to Iowa. We 00:04:00children all grew up--I had a brother and a sister, and we all grew up there in Ames, Iowa. Actually, as I look back, it was a very sheltered life because the entire community looked after us.

SLOAN: Well, I know some defining memories from folks in your generation can be from the Great Depression.

HARTMAN: Yes.

SLOAN: Are there some memories that stand out to you from that period?

HARTMAN: Very much so. We were certainly not wealthy, but we were not ever wanting of any of the necessities of life. I do remember the hobos coming to our home on a regular basis in DeRidder. Mother always fed them. I guess there were 00:05:00probably five or six hobos a week would come to our back door asking for food, for a meal and she never ever failed to feed them. There was, in Iowa, very little of the hobo element.

SLOAN: That's what I've--I'm sure you saw much more poverty in Louisiana.

HARTMAN: Yes, much more poverty in Louisiana, yeah.

SLOAN: What was it like growing up in a college town like that which Ames very much is?

HARTMAN: Well, it was very interesting because the schools were pretty much set up with the notion that all of us would be going to college. It was just that way. I think that probably--some of the children probably suffered, as I look back on it, because they were not going to go to college and they didn't have 00:06:00the education that probably would have served them for a lesser than a university future.

SLOAN: I see, but I know your father had that expectation for you.

HARTMAN: We never thought otherwise, yeah.

SLOAN: Well, did you--we know the end of the story. You're going to end up in medicine, but was that something that you were attracted to at an early age?

HARTMAN: It was. Our family doctor in DeRidder, Dr. Love, was a very much admired person in the community. I just always had it in the back of my mind that I would like to be like Dr. Love. I guess that's sort of the way it stayed.

SLOAN: Before we get to that point, I know a lot happens. (laughs) So let's go 00:07:00up to 1941, which--of course, the war had been building in Europe, but another defining moment is always Pearl Harbor. Hearing of Pearl Harbor and reactions to that event and--can you take me through your remembrances of that?

HARTMAN: I remember coming home from church and having the radio on and hearing the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. We didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. We got out the atlas and looked it up and figured out exactly where it was and what it probably meant to us. There was very much a depressed feeling throughout the nation, I think. I was--let's see--I was sixteen years of age at 00:08:00that time. I worked a lot, as all children in Iowa did. Most all of us had a job of some sort, and I did a lot of common labor of shoveling snow and cleaning windows and that sort of thing. I remember trying to be sure that I was earning enough money so that I could keep money in the bank if I ever needed to do something real with it and not have to do common labor the rest of my life.

SLOAN: But you liked Iowa, sounds like.

HARTMAN: Yes, yes. We've liked Iowa very much because people were very friendly 00:09:00and were very open about everything.

SLOAN: Yeah.

HARTMAN: And we did have family--my father's families--two sisters were there and we had families we visited quite often. But we liked the Iowa people.

SLOAN: So you graduated high school in '43?

HARTMAN: Forty-three, yeah.

SLOAN: Nineteen forty-three.

HARTMAN: Yeah, I was eighteen when I graduated from high school.

SLOAN: You made the decision to enlist at that point?

HARTMAN: Well, I did. But, as it seemed, in high school, the army and the navy offered an examination for all boys. The girls, of course, at that time would not be eligible for anything like that. The examination was called the A-12--V-12 examination. If you passed grade-wise, passed that examination, the 00:10:00navy would send you to the college of your choice. They would give you a choice of several colleges. The army would send you for basic training first and then would send you to a college of their choice. Well, I took that examination--as did most of the boys--and I passed it. I didn't know how to swim, because we didn't have any swimming pools. I thought, Well, I really don't want to be in navy. That was one reason. My dad had been in the army in World War I, so I 00:11:00thought, I better sign up for the army. So I did. I went and enlisted in the army. They told me that I would have possibly a year, but at least six months of college before I'd be called. So I enrolled in Iowa State. Six weeks later, I was called to active duty.

SLOAN: (laughs) Yeah. So couldn't you just learn to swim? Wasn't that an option to you? Just learning how to swim? (both laugh)

HARTMAN: Oh shoot. Well, we--they did have a swimming pool in Ames, but they didn't have it in DeRidder. All we had was creeks to swim in down there. It wasn't very adequate swimming, sort of. There were no lessons and no real 00:12:00adequate swimming chances down there in DeRidder. We did have a swimming pool in Ames.

SLOAN: So your first college experience was six weeks long?

HARTMAN: Right, but I had opted out of--through some courses in high school gotten credit for college. So I had gotten--with that and some quick work in that first semester, I was able to get a semester's worth of credits.

SLOAN: Hm, that's great, yeah. So you're called up, and where do they send you?

HARTMAN: Sent me to Camp Roberts, California, to the artillery. When they were questioning us when we first got to Camp Roberts about various courses we'd 00:13:00taken in high school and all, I had said I had taken typewriting. Well, they immediately decided I was going to be a clerk. So I was assigned to go through clerk school. So we had six weeks of regular field artillery training, hiking and learning how to fire all kinds of guns. Then we were sent into the classroom and learned how to type more efficiently and learn all sorts of army records and various things like that.

SLOAN: Well, can you tell me a little bit about your field artillery training? Some stories you may remember from that?

HARTMAN: Once a week, we had an eight-mile hike. At the end of the day, we hiked 00:14:00out into some far piece of Camp Roberts to spend the night and cook our own meal and also had to learn all the methods of personal hygiene when you're camping out, like that with digging your own little latrine hole and how to do it up--downhill from the water--(phone rings) Just leave it--digging it downhill from the water flow and things like that. We also really had to learn how to hike very efficiently because they didn't let us--they had a time limit for us to hike certain distances. We could only stop short whiles before we'd be hiking 00:15:00again to get where we were going.

SLOAN: Well, you were going through an accelerated program--

HARTMAN: Yes, we were.

SLOAN: At that point, yeah.

HARTMAN: After we were completed four months there, they weren't sure that I was going to be sent to ASTP, which the army called their program that was A-12 to start with. But it was finally decided that they would send me to the University of Oregon, which they did--to the ASTP program there. It was very pleasant. It was a nice green campus. It was like being on campus again in a dormitory 00:16:00and--Mrs. Turnipseed was in charge of our dormitory and the food. (laughs) There is a name like that. (Sloan laughs) That was her name.

SLOAN: So you ate well?

HARTMAN: We ate well there. We really enjoyed it. There were very few civilian boys, so we were really having a great time. We didn't have time during the week, but we really dated on the weekends.

SLOAN: The odds were good.

HARTMAN: The odds were very good. (Sloan laughs) We thought we were real Lotharios.

SLOAN: I'm not saying you needed the odds to be in your favor, but the odds were good, yeah. We'll just leave it at that.

HARTMAN: They were in our favor.

SLOAN: (laughs) Well, now, what specialization--what were you being--

HARTMAN: We were going to be engineers. But we were only there about two months 00:17:00when rumors began to surface that they were needing troops for the ground troops for the upcoming invasion. They weren't going to be allow--they weren't going to be able to just let us stay in ASTP much longer. Sure enough, at the end of ten weeks, they announced that all the ASTPs were closing except for medicine and foreign languages. Sure enough, it closed. They--at that point, they sent all of us that were at the University of Oregon down to Camp Cook in California where the Eleventh Armored Division was very much in need of people. It was 00:18:00interesting. When we marched from the University of Oregon campus down to the train depot, the people in town lined the streets to say goodbye. (tears) We didn't realize that we had meant that much. It was very touching.

SLOAN: Yeah, it sounds like it was.

HARTMAN: But we got on the train. In two days, arrived at Camp Cooke in the middle of the night. They got us off and made us all take showers and get examined, physically examined, and then got in front of some army officers who were questioning us about different things who then decided where we would be 00:19:00assigned. I was assigned to Company B Forty-first Tank Battalion. I don't know why.

SLOAN: Because you hadn't done anything related to even heavy artillery or tanks or anything like that.

HARTMAN: No, nothing.

SLOAN: Well, once that assignment--you went into some training?

HARTMAN: We started training and learning all sorts of different things about tanks. Then, the company commander had an interview with each one of us and asked what position we would like to be in. He asked if I would like to be a gunner firing the big gun up in the turret or would like to be a driver. I told him I thought I could do either one, so whichever he seemed to think he needed 00:20:00me to be in the most would be satisfactory with me. The next thing I knew, I was told that I would be a driver. That's how it came about.

SLOAN: Well, I want to ask you. The first time you got behind a--and drove, do you have a memory of when you first got into a Sherman? Wait, were you training on Shermans?

HARTMAN: Um-hm.

SLOAN: Yeah, first time you got behind a Sherman as a driver.

HARTMAN: It was pretty intimidating because the first thing was they had air-cooled engines, not regular motor-cooled--water-cooled engines. They required an entirely different shifting sort of systems. You had to double shift 00:21:00and do things that I'd never heard of even. We learned and the tanks would jerk and go forward, but we gradually learned how--on those old--those tanks had been through the desert training, and they were absolutely filthy--but we learned how to drive them gradually and not make mistakes with them and go into night fighting. After being there for probably--it must have been about sixth months--we learned that they were planning to send us overseas.

SLOAN: Do you know about how many hours you got in--

HARTMAN: Driving?

SLOAN: Driving in those six months? That's a hard question, I know, but--

HARTMAN: It is, but I would say easily, by then, I had driven a hundred hours.

SLOAN: So you had a lot of comfort then.

HARTMAN: Yeah, we drove at night and day and weekends. There was just no--there wasn't any time that was kept to wait. I mean, we were expected to be available any of those times to do weekend maneuvers and night maneuvers, and we learned how to go.

SLOAN: Well, I'd like to ask it while we're here because I know you became intimately familiar with a Sherman tank.

HARTMAN: I did.

SLOAN: So I'd like you to maybe share some of the other kind of peculiarities of a Sherman tank and things that most people don't know about Shermans as far as 00:23:00operating one and what it's like to operate one.

HARTMAN: Well, let me first say--when we got our new tanks in Europe, they were totally different because they had two Ford V-8 engines welded together, and they were water-cooled. They were so much easier to drive. But all the Sherman tanks drew the air for the--the engine was in the rear, but they drew the air for the engine through the tank. So in the summer it was hot in the tank, and in the winter it was frigid. It was not comfortable riding by any means. The driver sat in the left front. To his right was a huge transmission with a little space 00:24:00above it. To his right, to the right of the transmission, was the assistant driver. Up behind us was the turret where there were three men, the tank commander who had to have his head out of the turret at all times, in battle, at nighttime, didn't matter. He could not close the turret, close his opening of the turret. That was a no-no. Also then, in the turret was the gunner who fired the big gun and then a machine gun. Then there was a loader who would load all the ammunition for whatever the gunner was firing. The tank had a tremendous storage space under the turret--under the floor of the turret for all kinds of 00:25:00ammunition, meant for food. We could store lots of food in there. Terribly noisy. That's why I have hearing aids.

SLOAN: Really?

HARTMAN: Yeah. My ears have rung ever since then.

SLOAN: Yeah. Who knows what the decibel level is when you got that full bore.

HARTMAN: The tracks were right here and this big gun was right here. I'm sitting here between them.

SLOAN: And you've got no ear protection.

HARTMAN: No, there was never any thought of that. Then, the--well, I guess I'll tell more later about the Battle of the Bulge if you want to talk about it.

SLOAN: Well, yeah, I definitely want to get that. So we've gone through your 00:26:00training as a tank battalion. When do you leave Cooke?

HARTMAN: We left Cooke in September of that year after about six months of training on the tanks. There were two full trainloads to carry my company--to carry my battalion. We went different routes across the United States. We traveled south all the way across the southern states all the way to Georgia and then north up to just south of New York City at--I can't think of the name of it.

SLOAN: Somewhere in New Jersey? Was it in New Jersey?

HARTMAN: Yeah, it was in New Jersey, right.

SLOAN: New Jersey, yeah. So you shipped out from there to England.

HARTMAN: We shipped out from there to New England. We were there in New Jersey about ten days. At the same time, some of the--several people from our organization had been sent to a camp near there to pick up the new tanks for us and get them started on the way. They were in the same convoy that we were on going over to Europe. It was the largest convoy to cross--up to that time anyway. As far as you could look, there was forecastles of ships everywhere and 00:28:00every look. I have no idea how many ships there were.

SLOAN: Were these Liberty ships? Were these--

HARTMAN: Liberty ships. Submarines were around us diving in and out protecting us, all kinds of navy ships dropping--at one point, there were some of them dropping over these barrels--

SLOAN: Depth charges?

HARTMAN: Yeah, your depth charges for submarines and just all sorts of stuff going on.

SLOAN: Well, how did the ocean passage go for you?

HARTMAN: It was two full weeks. Very slow. We were not allowed on deck at night. We had to be down inside. We had to have on our vest during the day if we were 00:29:00on deck, which was all fine. Our entertainment--one of our entertainments was the chaplain's assistant who was from hillbilly country. He sang all (phone rings) kinds of hillbilly songs for us. (phone rings) I remember one of them was about a drunken driver and whiskey. Saw a wreck on the highway and--I don't remember the thing now, but it was--

SLOAN: You wouldn't sing it for us, would you?

HARTMAN: No. (both laugh)

SLOAN: There wasn't a lot of entertainment aboard ships.

HARTMAN: I saw a wreck on the highway, but I didn't hear nobody pray.

SLOAN: Oh. (both laugh) Well, did your trip across make you glad you weren't in 00:30:00the navy?

HARTMAN: Well, I didn't know enough about it to think yet.

SLOAN: You were wondering what was next, I'm sure.

HARTMAN: Yes, we were.

SLOAN: Well, talk about when you got to England and what was your impressions there.

HARTMAN: We were very impressed with the--the first thing they put us on was railroad cars--okay--different railroad cars than we'd ever seen. You'd open--all the seats were open from doors from the outside. There was no center row. We'd never seen anything like this before. I couldn't get over the lush countryside. Everything was green and pretty. The first place they took us to 00:31:00was a temporary camp. We went to the little church there, and it had been--it was several centuries old, but it was really a lovely little British--Church of England, of course. We really enjoyed the service even though it was very different from what we were used to. But we did enjoy being in England even though we knew something was coming up that would not be so pleasant.

One of my friends and I got a couple of passes to London and saw the things that we thought we needed to see, you know. One time, one of the passes, we got to 00:32:00London and, as we got off the train, I said to him, "Why don't we ask if--I don't even know where Oxford is, but let's just ask if there's a train from here to Oxford and when it's going." We asked the guard at the gate and he said, "Oh, there's one leaving in a half an hour. It'll take you an hour to get there." We took that train and went out to Oxford and spent the weekend there. Went to the annual Oxford-Cambridge rugby football meet and just had a great time. Enjoyed ourselves thoroughly there. Did never get back to London. Went on back to our camp.

SLOAN: How were the Brits?

HARTMAN: They were good with us as far as we could see. They were very thoughtful of--there was a woman took us on a tour of Oxford and all the 00:33:00colleges. She was just as thoughtful as she could be to tell us everything and show us everything that she thought was appropriate for us to see.

SLOAN: Could you still see a lot of the effects from the Blitz in London?

HARTMAN: We did in London, oh yeah. It was really pitiful. But they were not down-beaten; they were just as plucky as they could be. We admired them greatly.

SLOAN: So when you're in your staging area there in Britain, I guess you received the new tanks.

HARTMAN: We got our new tanks. We had to get them ready because shipping over, they had to put all of the materials for the inside of the tank in something called Cosmoline--that's a mixture of wax and oil--so it wouldn't rust. We had 00:34:00to spend days on end with big barrels of--we had to set up barrels and have water and put a fire under them. Then, when the water boiled, we had to put these in and melt the Cosmoline off and then wipe them off and then put oil on them and then put them back together and put them in the tank. That must have taken us our first three weeks at our camp there to get all that put back together.

SLOAN: That's monotonous work, then.

HARTMAN: It was very monotonous work and all that was in the rain most of the time it seemed like. When we got them ready and got started on maneuvers there--we were in the southwestern part of England in the plains area. We really 00:35:00were able to do some really nice maneuvers out through there. These tanks were so different and so nice. They shifted smoothly, and they were totally different with this new engine.

SLOAN: Did you have occasion there to run into some folks that were back--I guess returning from Europe?

HARTMAN: Never did.

SLOAN: From the mainland, yeah. Well, I know--what sense did you have at that point of what was going on with the war?

HARTMAN: We listened to the news, and we saw newscasts at the theater of what was going on.

SLOAN: The newsreels? Yeah.

HARTMAN: Yeah, right. That's pretty much all that we knew.

SLOAN: So let's take it up to December. I know it all changes in December of 1944.

HARTMAN: It did.

SLOAN: So yes. Can you take me through that?

HARTMAN: We were starting--we were leaving our camp there in England and starting across. We went in absolutely pouring down rain. The driver has to 00:37:00drive with his head out when you're on the road and going more than five miles an hour. There's just no way you can do it otherwise. We drove for six hours in that rain--just pouring down--to get down to the harbor at Weymouth where we were to put our tanks on these landing ship tanks, these ships. We backed our tanks onto the ships--the prow of the ships would open up like this and then a great big door would drop down, and we backed up on that door and into the ship. 00:38:00We backed all our tanks on. Our tanks filled a number of ships--a number of tanks could get on one of those ships, yeah. It took several ships to take all of us.

We all loaded and then moved away from the harbor and then sat there for two days. We had the finest eating we'd had in ages. Fresh rolls and ice cream. Things we'd never heard of for months and months. It was then that the Germans had started the Battle of the Bulge while we were starting across. We were supposed to be going to southwest France to where they had a submarine pen. 00:39:00(Flipping through pages) We were supposed to block. See, they had this submarine pen and they had kept it all alone because the Germans could take care of it from the sea. They could bring supplies in from the sea. So they were still operational when--

SLOAN: I see, they still had it occupied, yeah.

HARTMAN: Yeah, they still occupied it. We were supposed to come in and block it from the land and maybe move in on it as possible. That was our assignment when 00:40:00we started across on the boat. Well, just as we got to France, they totally changed that. Told us we were to engage in a forced march across northern France.

SLOAN: Ah, because of the Bulge.

HARTMAN: To the Bulge, yeah. (flips pages) It was the Lorient and Saint-Nazaire were those two French places. They had us load up with all the ammunition we could take because they were having trouble getting supplies across, too. As they moved inland, they needed more trucks and--that could carry supplies on 00:41:00roads. So they had us load every tank with every piece of ammunition and food and supplies that we could possibly take in the tank. And then we set out on these about a five-day forced march across northern France and ended up just barely into Belgium and not far from Bastogne. That's then when we started into the Battle of the Bulge.

SLOAN: I see. Can you take us through that first resistance, you know, when you met the enemy?

HARTMAN: Yeah. We spent the night just at the edge of--southwest of Bastogne, 00:42:00just a little--thirty miles--just at the edge of where the enemy was. Then the following morning we were to take off. Usually the artillery shoots a lot and prepares the way for us to come in. But they had not been able to get there. Our reconnaissance also had not been able to get there, so we didn't know what we 00:43:00were meeting. But they sent us out into the battlefield, and I kept thinking, Well, I hope all of the stuff that we've learned to do by rote we'll do by rote and it'll work. And it actually did. I had to keep low in the driver's seat--I had to keep my lid down. So I had to look at where we were going through the periscope. And the tank commander is supposed to keep giving instructions to the driver, but he was really so occupied that he wasn't giving me very much in the way of instructions. We were doing okay. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like our 00:44:00tanks were going in a different direction.

That first day, we ended up gaining about five miles, which was the most that had been gained that day in the Battle of the Bulge. The first day though, our company commander's tank was hit and he was killed. Some of his tank crew were killed and two of them were captured. Another tank with some of my best friends in it was hit. That tank commander was injured badly. His knees--legs were shot off. The Germans captured them, and they forced them to carry the tank commander 00:45:00up about two miles to their headquarters. This all happened the first day. We didn't know all that was going on. We did know that we lost several tanks that first day. Eighteen tanks is in a company. We knew that we had lost at least three tanks that first day.

When we stopped at the end of the day, things seemed to sort of settle down. The Germans did a little counterattack, but we turned it back, and it wasn't a big problem. The next day, we went on toward another--maybe four miles forward--a 00:46:00little town named Chenogne, and we fought with the infantry. Our tanks and infantry fought together very well. The infantry--we were supporting them, and they went in two times. They got driven back out two times. We spent that night outside Chenogne. Then the following day, we went into the town in force and took it with the infantry and us working together. Finally, it was clear enough for the air force to come in. Eighteen out of twenty-one houses in that town 00:47:00were destroyed during the battle.

SLOAN: Wow, but you were finally getting some air support.

HARTMAN: Yeah, but we finally got air support. That was the first day that we saw them.

SLOAN: So now, when you're advancing, is there German heavy artillery? Are you facing panzers [ed. note: German tanks]?

HARTMAN: Oh yeah. They were shooting at us. New Year's Eve they really gave us a display while we were filling our gas tanks. The gas tanks, they're on the back, and you have to stand up on the rear deck, so if there's any sky at all, you're in a silhouette.

SLOAN: Well, you know, you talked about the tanks, and I know there's been a lot 00:48:00of talk about the Shermans versus the panzers, and just the plating and the tracks and all of the advantages the panzers had, but the Shermans served us pretty well, didn't they?

HARTMAN: It did because we could keep producing them. Because they were not nearly as good from an armor standpoint, but from a mechanical standpoint, they were much better. Our turret, for example--the gunner just turned a little handle, and he could turn it electrically 360 degrees. The German had to turn it by hand and that's very slow and laborious. But the German projectile could go through our tank and ours would bounce off of his.

SLOAN: Well, I'll ask you. You said you had hoped your training had prepared you 00:49:00for live fire, but, as you got into it, were there things you realized that your training had not prepared you for?

HARTMAN: Well, they didn't tell us about the German tank. That we had not had any detailed discussion about how good it was.

SLOAN: They were monsters, weren't they?

HARTMAN: Right, they were monsters. But we learned how to face them and get around behind them. We could go through the rear end on them, and we learned how to do that on our own. No one told us to.

SLOAN: So you learned over time where the weaknesses were?

HARTMAN: Yeah, right. We did. But the worst part about the Battle of the Bulge 00:50:00was the snow and ice. There was no heater in the tanks, so the air was coming through--our engine had to run all day long. Even if you're not moving, you've got to have the engine running. So if you're going to move, you got to go. We got frozen feet and--not only infantry, but tankers got frozen feet too.

SLOAN: You come up with any strategies to keep warm?

HARTMAN: No.

SLOAN: Nothing worked.

HARTMAN: My dad sent me some--after I sent a letter begging, he sent me some felt boots to wear, which helped.

SLOAN: Well, I know that was a very trying time in December and January.

HARTMAN: Well, it was. Three months were the worst with all that snow and ice. Because the snow was about like this, and it kept snowing.

SLOAN: Well, you know, at least--I guess one thing I think of with operating a tank, is there some advantage to the ground at least being frozen?

HARTMAN: Oh yes. Definitely. Because when it started to thaw, we really had problems.

SLOAN: Yeah, and I know you mentioned in your book about the getting the track extenders.

HARTMAN: We did, yeah. That was General Patton's idea.

SLOAN: Which had to help?

HARTMAN: Yes, yeah it did.

SLOAN: Well, when did you know things were changing with the Bulge as far of the level of resistance that you were--

HARTMAN: Um, it was while we were in Binsfeld, Luxembourg. Just as we were 00:52:00leaving there--we were no good at--tanks were no use in the Siegfried Line because it took infantry people to go through all that detailed stuff because they had so many--they had all kinds of concrete and steel blockage things connected one to another. Tanks couldn't go through that, but infantry could. Our infantry was doing real well going through that, so they had us out working on the roads, the tank people. So the infantry were working their way through 00:53:00the Siegfried Line, but, just as they were getting toward getting out of the Siegfried Line, they had us come up and start going. We could tell there was less ability to resist us at that point. We were making longer drives. We were going maybe fifteen or twenty miles in a day and getting some longer movement.

SLOAN: I guess the resistance you were facing wasn't organized resistance.

HARTMAN: And it wasn't nearly as organized, no. And that would have been February, yeah.

SLOAN: I know things began to change very quickly around February and March.

HARTMAN: Yes, they did. Yeah, they did. We would still hit--all the way to the very end, we would still hit some pretty vicious resistance, periodically.

SLOAN: Well, one story that--there's a couple stories I know that I want to ask you about for the purposes of this interview. I'm not sure of the chronology of them, but one of them was the one where you encountered the prisoners in the forest that were released. Do you mind telling me that story?

HARTMAN: Well, we were coming along--we were moving along, and this was after we had started moving more quickly, gaining more ground. All of a sudden, these people started showing up in strange-looking clothes, and we couldn't figure out what they were because we'd never seen anybody that had been in a concentration 00:55:00camp at that point. They started showing up in these stripes, broad stripes. No one had ever told us--I'm not sure anybody knew to tell us--about the concentration camps. We started seeing these people coming out from the trees, from the woods, and then getting in the road and getting in the way. We couldn't run over them. That's not American. They just kept--more and more and more intensely coming. We'd find some of them lying in the ditches along the road. Gradually, we began to appreciate that this was some sort of prisoner, maybe 00:56:00because they were wearing similar clothes. And then, over the radio they told us that they had just found out that these prisoners had been released from a concentration camp. I don't remember the name of it.

SLOAN: I think it--was it Buchenwald?

HARTMAN: It was Buchenwald.

SLOAN: Flossenburg, yeah.

HARTMAN: Yeah, they had been released to get in our way and to slow our path, slow us down. They did slow us down, but they would absolutely stop us and kiss the front of a tank, or they'd salute us. It was--I couldn't help but cry 00:57:00myself. I had never seen anything like that. I couldn't understand. Of course, I didn't know the whole background picture either, I just couldn't figure out. Some of them had their buddies with them. One of them was taking care of his buddy over on the side of the road. He wouldn't leave his buddy who, I gathered, was dying. It was just all sorts of little scenes, many scenes along the way. They kept coming, but gradually, we seemed to be able to get them to stay out of the way, and we were able to move on more. I think our infantry troops were 00:58:00better at dealing with them than we were because they were on the ground and could help them understand that they needed to stay away from the road so we could keep our force moving on forward. The infantry did go after some of the guards that had been at that concentration camp.

SLOAN: Some of the SS?

HARTMAN: Yeah.

SLOAN: Were you involved in that?

HARTMAN: No.

SLOAN: No, the infantry--

HARTMAN: I wasn't involved in that.

SLOAN: Yeah, your objective was to keep moving, yeah.

HARTMAN: Right.

SLOAN: Well, the veterans that we've talked to talk about how nothing had prepared them for that, even fields of combat. It was different.

HARTMAN: Right. The first dead people I saw really were kind of hard to accept. How could people do that to people? But I got over that. But I hadn't seen anything like this, and it was so different.

SLOAN: Well, I'm not sure how long after that that your company was taken--that you found out about Mauthausen.

HARTMAN: It was about three weeks after that, I think.

SLOAN: Do you mind sharing that story about going to Mauthausen?

HARTMAN: Well, one of my friends was a medic. The way I got to go there was he 01:00:00was going over--he was on duty of certain duty hours. He asked if I would like to go over and see this because it was so different. I said yes, I would like to see it. So he arranged for me to go over when he was going over for his duty hours. We went over, and he told me--he prepared me for it as we were going--he told me that he was--when he got there--he said he wouldn't be able to spend a lot of time because he would be very busy doing the medical things for these people that were urgent. When we got there, there were these stacks of people 01:01:00like cordwood. There were still fires going. It was quite eerie, and there were still fires going in the furnaces with the bones in the furnace.

Then, in the barracks where they had their people, there was so many to one bed. I can't even remember how many. You almost couldn't count them. They were all so--they were just skin and bone, every one of them. People wandering around. You wondered how they could even move. They were just nothing but skin and bone. I was out in the grounds around there--there was a large ground around there 01:02:00because there was a big limestone quarry, and all around there were these skin-and-bone people wandering around kind of listlessly doing nothing, just moving around. I was glad I got to see it, but I was glad that I didn't have to stay out there.

SLOAN: Yeah, so how long did you stay in the camp?

HARTMAN: Only a couple of hours.

SLOAN: Couple of hours. Did you get a chance to interact with any of the--

HARTMAN: No, because I didn't speak German, and I didn't know how to ask anything.

SLOAN: What sort of work was your friend doing, the medic?

HARTMAN: He was just doing medical work. Whatever he did I guess was medical 01:03:00needs for these people.

SLOAN: One thing that's fairly emphasis--infamous about Mauthausen is the quarry. Did you see the quarry area or the work area?

HARTMAN: Yeah.

SLOAN: With the steps?

HARTMAN: Yeah, and Gusen is just as bad in its own way. I've been in the cave at Gusen since then that had been a factory building jet airplanes. I was there this last trip two years ago in the cemetery that they've got out there at Gusen. The thing that amazes me is they have made kind of a sub-division out by 01:04:00Mauthausen, and people have bought land and built new houses. I, for the life of me, I can't believe that anybody could do that.

SLOAN: Right. It's hard to believe.

HARTMAN: Yeah.

SLOAN: You know, I wonder as you talked about it if seeing these--did it change how you thought about the war or how you thought about what you were doing there?

HARTMAN: Well, it made me realize more than ever why we were there. Absolutely. The first ones we saw that were getting in our way made me realize why we were there.

SLOAN: Because I know you're doing your job, but you're not always thinking about the bigger purpose.

HARTMAN: Right.

SLOAN: So I know it had to have made you think about that.

HARTMAN: And I was not very pleasant to the German people when we were in the 01:05:00army of occupation.

SLOAN: Well, are there--anything else about Mauthausen that you want to share before I--

HARTMAN: The two times we've been back--you know, they meet every year in celebration and to thank the Eleventh Armored. There are almost 20,000 people come to that celebration. We've been there two times. I didn't know--I didn't understand that one. The first meeting we went to, we got there and, as far as 01:06:00you could see, there were buses from all over Europe. People come who've had a connection. Some of them were the prisoners themselves who wear a scarf made out of material from their original outfit, striped, and others were from families who had a connection. But they all had a connection from Spain, Italy, all over the place.

SLOAN: What has that been like for you to go back and participate in that?

HARTMAN: It's been very touching every time I went. I really got very touched about all of it. You see that and you think, They're not going to let this happen again.

SLOAN: Well, I know it's got to be moving--

HARTMAN: Yes, it really is.

SLOAN: --to know it's something that you had a part in.

HARTMAN: Yeah, oh yeah.

SLOAN: Well, let's fast-forward a little bit to a happier day, when Germany surrendered. (laughs) When did you get the news? And I think I know what your reaction was, but--(laughs)

HARTMAN: Well, our company commander--whom we really thought highly of--he came in to us after our first two company commanders got--well, one of them got killed and the other one got badly injured with a brain injury. But this one said, "I hope that you would maybe just think about your buddies that are not still here and celebrate appropriately." So we did.

SLOAN: So was it a more somber celebration because of that?

HARTMAN: Yes, it was. It was very somber.

SLOAN: Well, personally I know you didn't have enough points to get out.

HARTMAN: (laughs) Right, I didn't.

SLOAN: Because you hadn't been in that long. So when did you--you were in the army of occupation, I know, for a period of time, but I guess you thought you may have ended up in the Pacific, I guess at some point.

HARTMAN: I was destined to go, yes.

SLOAN: Can you take me through, kind of, that period? Where were you stationed after that?

HARTMAN: I got moved around some. They took me out of the Eleventh Armored Division because it was going to be retired. They sent me to two different armored tank companies separate, just isolated armored tank companies. Then one 01:09:00of them sent us with our tanks up to Nuremburg, Germany, where we turned our tanks in. Left us up there to the army of occupation outside of Nuremburg. Actually, Nuremburg had a lot of nice activities going on. I attended the war crimes trials. I really appreciated the opportunity to do that.

SLOAN: Well, tell me a little bit more about that.

HARTMAN: Well, it surprised me how well organized it was, and how they had earphones, and they had immediate translation in all five languages that were being used. I couldn't--one of them was the language of the person who was 01:10:00speaking. The other were four languages: French, German, English, and Russian.

SLOAN: The Allies' languages.

HARTMAN: Yeah, when we walked in--one of my friends that I was rooming with and I got tickets to go--when we came in, Rudolph Hess was goose-stepping down the hall going to the bathroom. (Both laughing) I don't know, I don't remember. Most of them weren't paying any attention at all. This one--could care less of what was going on. That's what it looked like.

SLOAN: From your description, you were impressed how orderly and professionally it was.

HARTMAN: It was. It gave them--

SLOAN: Because it didn't have to be, but it was.

HARTMAN: That's right, yeah.

SLOAN: Was this one trip or did you--

HARTMAN: Just one trip.

SLOAN: Just one trip up there to see it?

HARTMAN: Yeah.

SLOAN: You showed great restraint not walking into the bathroom and--(both laugh)--Well, how long were you in Nuremburg. Were you there--

HARTMAN: Well, I was there for about three months, and then I applied to go to the--the army set up two universities over there. One of them was in England, and one of them was Biarritz, France. I applied to the one in Biarritz, and I got accepted. I got to go there for two months to the Biarritz American 01:12:00University. We stayed in all those fancy hotels and had really nice food and had all kinds of nice--I mean, they had concerts and plays and all sorts of stuff going on. The local French people were invited to all of it. It was really a very pleasant episode in my life to be there. Then, after that was over, they closed it. I was at the last semester there. They closed it because they were needing us to go back to the army of occupation. I went back for three months to Germany, to Nuremburg and stayed there until I got sent home.

SLOAN: Now, when did you get sent home?

HARTMAN: In March of 1946.

SLOAN: Okay. Well, I'll ask about V-J Day, too. I asked you about--was V-J Day a little more of a celebration than V-E Day?

HARTMAN: Yes, it was, because I was much happier that I wouldn't be going over that way.

SLOAN: I bet. Well, you decided to not make military your career--

HARTMAN: I did.

SLOAN: --at some point. Did you enjoy military life?

HARTMAN: Not really.

SLOAN: Yeah. (laughs) This idea of medicine that had been implanted years ago you were ready to get back to.

HARTMAN: Right.

SLOAN: Well, talk about that transition back when you came back.

HARTMAN: It was pretty easy just to go right back to school. I had about--spring semester started about a week after I got home and I just signed up and went.

SLOAN: How had Iowa State, the university, changed? Because I know it was a very different place than when you started.

HARTMAN: It was.

SLOAN: A lot of GIs.

HARTMAN: Oh boy, it was loaded with a lot of GIs. Classes were full, really full. But I still figured that I wanted to do medicine, but I had to save my GI Bill because I knew medical school would be expensive, and I better save it for then, so I did, pretty much.

SLOAN: Well, your dad--you probably got tuition at Iowa State because your dad--

HARTMAN: No, they didn't do that.

SLOAN: No? Oh, they should have done that.

HARTMAN: They should have, but they didn't. (Sloan laughing)

SLOAN: So you went--where did you do your med school?

HARTMAN: At Northwestern in Chicago.

SLOAN: Northwestern, okay. Then, where did you do your residency?

HARTMAN: At University of Michigan.

SLOAN: University of Michigan, okay. How did you end up in Lubbock, Texas?

HARTMAN: Well, (both laugh) I was chairman of orthopedics at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. And that's kind of a dream job for a teacher because we had all the residents from all four of the university programs coming to Cook County Hospital for part of their program because we had three hundred and fifty orthopedic beds, and so we had virtually every orthopedic entity that occurred at any time was there. It was great teaching, and strong students, strong residents from all of those programs. They came after they were more advanced, 01:16:00so I was really enjoying it. But I was asked to come serve as a consultant to help plan the startup of a new medical school at Texas Tech. I was so fascinated by it, when they asked if I would join the faculty, I did. That's how it happened.

SLOAN: Well, building something is always very rewarding.

HARTMAN: Right.

SLOAN: So the opportunity to come here was to build something.

HARTMAN: It was and it has been. It really has.

SLOAN: So when did you come to Lubbock?

HARTMAN: Nineteen seventy-one. Jean wasn't really happy at first, but--

SLOAN: She's forgiven you since then?

HARTMAN: Oh yeah. It's a great place to raise children.

SLOAN: Yes. Very different than Chicago.

HARTMAN: Oh yeah. We loved it in Chicago, we really did, but--

SLOAN: Well, I've taken more of your time than I told you I would take, but--

HARTMAN: No, that's all right.

SLOAN: Are there--before we close, I want to ask, are there some things I should have asked you that I didn't ask you?

HARTMAN: Okay.

SLOAN: Anything that I should have asked you that I didn't, that I failed to ask you?

HARTMAN: Like what?

SLOAN: If there are some things related to your service that you would have liked to share, but I didn't give you a chance to.

HARTMAN: Well, no. I grew up fast. (Sloan laughs) I mean, I didn't regret it, you know.

SLOAN: What do you think you took from your military service into your 01:18:00professional career?

HARTMAN: Oh, I matured tremendously, and I learned how to deal with a lot of problems. With the problems that life faces you. I learned how to deal with those very well, very quickly.

SLOAN: This is an odd question, but have you gotten in the driver's seat in a Sherman tank since?

HARTMAN: I have.

SLOAN: (laughs) When did you do that?

HARTMAN: Well, when we were in Belgium some years later. I didn't--yeah, I'll tell you something else, too. When we were in Belgium some years later, I--a number of private people owned those tanks in Belgium. One of them asked me if I'd like to sit in the driver's seat. I said, Yeah, I would.

SLOAN: Those tanks that didn't make it back--

HARTMAN: That's right. At an international orthopedic meeting, I met an 01:19:00orthopedic surgeon who was fourteen years old during the biggest battle in Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge. His closest friend was thirteen in Chenogne, in the village I mentioned that we took from the Germans. He insisted that we were to come to stay with them with them at the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge and meet this friend who grew up in Chenogne. And we did. Jean and I went for the fiftieth anniversary, but also to meet Andre Burnette and his wife. We've all become very close friends. We've been back in their 01:20:00home. They've been over here. Just has been a great experience. I guess we've been to Belgium probably eight or ten times.

SLOAN: Oh, that's great.

HARTMAN: We've really enjoyed the friendship so much. They still love us. They're still teaching all this to their students in school, which I'm sorry we aren't because I think we ought to be.

SLOAN: Well, that's one of the reasons why we're doing this project, so that's a good way to end. We want these for future generations, too. I want to thank you so much for your service, but also for taking the time to do your book, which I know was a lot of work, but it's wonderful that we can have it.

HARTMAN: Something about the book, too. Jean and I never even thought about--I've had quite a number of letters from parents of my friends who were 01:21:00killed wanting to know more about the death. I never thought about that, but the army only tells them that they were killed in action. I could tell them details like, one of them was a tank commander. In Belgium, the German eighty-eight entered that turret. Spun around, killed all three instantly, and exited. Now, that's worth knowing, you know, to the parents. I've had a lot of--quite a number of letters like that, and we never even thought of some of those sort of things. One son of one of my close friends wrote and wanted to know a little bit more about his dad. His dad never talked about his army experience. His dad was 01:22:00injured when the tank rolled over. He never told his family any of that, and I talked about it in the book. It's just a bunch of things like that that I've written about. So we feel rewarded by just some of that.

SLOAN: Yeah, well it's great you did it. Yeah, it's great you did it. Thank you, Dr. Hartman.

HARTMAN: You're most welcome. It's been a pleasure.

end of interview