In One Profound Transformation--From Hero to Villain

Doug Graves © 2008
“This was also the day when I turned, in one profound transformation, from being a hero to being a villain,” said former First Lieutenant Gerhard G. Hennes. The former Afrika Korps soldier under legendary Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was describing the day that as a prisoner of war in Crossville, Tennessee he and his fellow POWs were assembled in a movie theater and shown documentary films depicting the carnage and inhumanity of the German concentration camps in Europe.
“I had no idea of the extent and ferocity [to which concentration camps were] murdering innocent people. I have never totally recovered from the shock sustained in that dark and suddenly uncomfortably hot movie theater in Crossville.”
Hennes, now 86, and Wendall A. Phillips, 84, were at the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum on January 26 to share experiences with local citizens of all ages.
Phillips who, as a U. S. Army Air Force – Air Transport Command radio operator, had twice during World War II been a prisoner of war—once a prisoner of the Germans in or near the French-Belgium border and later a prisoner of the Japanese in Shanghai.
Phillips and Hennes, who had never met, were sitting side by side, both speakers in a living history symposium organized by museum director Joseph Garrera.
The attendance exceeded expectations of the museum staff and the overflow lined the walls and jammed the entrance to the lecture hall. Museum staffers quickly arranged a second session for later in the afternoon. The second session was also crowded with local residents who wanted to hear the stories of these two remarkable veterans.
Hennes, after his capture in North Africa had been in 16 POW camps in six countries when he finally was transported on the Queen Mary across the Atlantic Ocean and finally to Crossville, Tennessee.
He described his experience as a POW in America in generally positive terms even to the point of describing how his father, also a POW held in Colorado, had paid the train fare for himself and a guard and got himself transferred to Tennessee to be with his son, Gerhardt.
Phillips, telling his own improbable story to the standing room only audience, described how he had the bad luck to be a prisoner of war of both the German army and later of the Japanese army.
After enlisting in the army in November of 1942, Phillips, then a student at the Crane School of Music, was trained as an infantry soldier and then as a radio operator.
As a radio operator he found himself transporting ammunition and other supplies in a two-engine C-47 cargo plane from a base in Grove, England to American Army forces fighting their way through France and Belgium.
“We would land on steel mat landing strips, and after unloading our supplies, we would hang stretchers with wounded men on the cargo straps, and place ambulatory wounded on canvas flight seats and fly them back to England,” said Phillips. “Those were some of the first air evacuations of wounded from a battlefield.”
“In September, [1944] on my last trip, we had problems in one of the engines. The pilot landed safely and we off-loaded our supplies. The pilot decided not to take wounded out on this trip because of the engine problem—he wasn’t sure we would make it back. We took off but immediately lost power in one engine. We were having trouble making altitude and were flying low when German ground fire took out the other engine.”
“Pilots had parachutes. We [radio operators] did not. We were expected to go down with the plane--but we were too low for the parachutes.”
“We crashed in a field and both pilots were killed. I was still strapped in my seat with a dislocated shoulder when German soldiers captured me.”
Phillips was loaded on a truck and taken to a temporary prison hospital compound which he believes was in Belgium.
“There were other prisoners there. Germans treated us well. They took our uniforms and gave us one piece jumpers to wear. They took our shoes and gave us old worn out shoes. We didn’t have socks or underwear. We had bunks and a pot-belly stove. Three of us, me from New York, a guy from Arkansas and, I think, a guy from Oklahoma, decided to escape. We saw that the fence was questionable where two sections were overlapped. It had an electric wire running through it but that didn’t matter; we were going anyway.”
“It came a foggy, foggy night. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face and it was snowing hard—wet, heavy snow. We waited until the guard and the dog had gone by. We waited, then we hit that fence right beside the post were we thought it was weak. It broke apart. We got a little electric shock but we went out anyway. We split up three ways. I started running—all night. I hid during the day.”
On the fourth day Phillips found himself in a goat barn owned by a sympathetic farmer who brought a friendly French Catholic priest who had been educated at Notre Dame. Soon after, he was back with the Army.
Gerhard Hennes, a lieutenant in the German army, was, like Phillips, in communications. He was in the Afrika Korps and fought in the Battles of Tobruk and El Alamain.
Hennes started his narrative by describing his first visit to a prison of war camp, one run by the Germany army in Europe.
“I was the Officer of the Day [at the army base] in Baumholder [in Birkenfeld, Rhineland-Palatinate] and one of my duties was to see the prison camp hidden away on the base. And so I decided to go there.
“When I came to the gate the sergeant snapped to attention. ‘Is every thing in order, sir?’”
There he saw Russian prisoners starving and living in squalor. “I thought I should report in my daily sheet saying that I thought a superior officer should examine the condition of these camps. But then I had second thoughts.”
“They [his friends that he discussed it with] thought I had better not say any thing.”
Hennes went on to describe an incident after the tables were turned and he himself was first interned in a POW camp in Africa. He was being punished for attempting to escape and was serving 30 days on bread and water in a barbed-wire compound.
“A French first lieutenant came up to the fence with a loaf of bread in his hand. He said something clearly rehearsed. ‘I was a prisoner of war in Germany. The wife of a farmer gave me a piece of bread. Here it is returned to you. I don’t want to owe you anything!”
It was later toward the end of the war when, as a POW in Tennessee that Hennes and his fellow POWs were ordered into the movie theater to see documentary films about the death camps that the Nazi’s had operated.
“We saw emaciated bodies and empty eyes of those who survived. We saw the piles of naked bodies. We saw mass graves. We saw ovens where tens of thousands had been cremated.”
“We saw and stared in silence—struggling, but unable to believe what we Germans had done to Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of war and any others deemed inferior or expendable. None of us that were in Crossfield, Tennessee will forget it, that documentary.”
Meanwhile, as Hennes was sitting in an American POW camp, Phillips had just begun the incredible bookend to his story. Having escaped from the German POW camp in Europe and made his was back to American lines with the help of the French-Catholic underground, he was reassigned to the China-Burma-India theatre.
There he continued his career as a radio operator on C-47s and C-46’s flying from China to India and back ferrying supplies over “The Hump”—the Himalayan Mountains.
“Pilots really learned to fly there,” he said. “We didn’t fly over the mountains but through them--in all kinds of weather.”
After 116 flights through the Himalayans his luck ran out again. While ferrying supplies from bases to base inside China, the aircraft lost hydraulic power. “The C-47 leaked hydraulic fluid,” he said. “I always carried an extra five gallons of hydraulic fluid.”
But with no hydraulics the plane was uncontrollable, according to Phillips. The airplane crashed in a rice paddy in China killing both pilots. The C-47 was quickly surrounded by Japanese forces which captured Phillips and literally “tossed” him into a truck.
He was imprisoned in the International YMC in Shanghai. Here he was beaten, starved and tortured while being kept in a closet deep within the building in Japanese-occupied China.
It was here, suffering at the hands of Japanese guards that he began to compare his treatment with that that he had received at the hands of the Germans. “The Japanese were animals,” Phillips said, his voice full of remembered fury.
Then one day in August 1945 his tormentors quit coming to his locked closet and for three and half days he lay in the dark, starving. Then a military police team, a Brit and a GI, kicked the door open. The war was over.
The seminar featuring these two veterans from opposite sides in World War II ended with the rapt audience giving them an ovation, followed by intense questioning. Many were there who had themselves been POWs and a few asked questions and shared their stories.
Though both live in Whitehall, Phillips and Hennes, who immigrated to the United States in January 1953, did not know each other until they met at the Heritage Center in Allentown.

Same Name, Same Ship, Different War

Doug Graves © 2007

In a parallel universe it might have made sense. But in the early 60’s when Harry C. Knecht was working in the air mail cage at the Allentown Post Office, he processed a letter addressed to a Harry W. Knecht aboard the USS Epperson (DDE -719). It was the same destroyer that Navy veteran Harry C. Knecht had served on as a radarman from 1950 to 1952.
“My first thought was that the Navy still had me on their crew roster,” Harry C. recalled recently. “I went ahead and forwarded the letter, but I thought about it for years afterward.” It wasn’t until about 5 years ago that postal worker Harry C. contacted Harry W. Knecht, by that time discharged from the Navy, and married to the former Michele Trescak of Bethlehem. He was still in uniform, but as a fire fighter in Bethlehem. The two Harry Knechts quickly found that not only did they share the same name; they were, indeed, both U. S. Navy veterans who had served on the same “tin can” although during two different tours of duty.
Harry C. Knecht, now 82, was a radarman in World War II on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV -16). It was dubbed the “Blue Ghost” by Tokyo Rose because the Japanese military thought it had been sunk several times. While Knecht was aboard the Lexington it earned eleven battle stars in rugged action. “In November, 1944, we were hit by a kamikaze suicide plane. It hit the secondary con [control room located in the “island” or superstructure] wiping out the bomber pilots but missing me in the radar room. It missed me by about 40 feet.” Near the end of the war, “the ship was rattled by the blast from an atomic bomb,” recalled the veteran of two wars.
Following his service in World War II, Harry C., the senior of the two Knechts, was honorably discharged from the Navy. He married his Emmaus High School sweetheart, the former Edna Eschbach. They settled down to married life when, in September, 1950, Harry C. was recalled to active duty for the Korean War. “I didn’t like it a bit,” said his wife, Edna. “We had a house and a young son. In those days when they went to war they were gone for years.” They now live in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
He joined the crew of the USS Epperson and sailed from Pearl Harbor. The Epperson was the flagship for Escort Division 12 and entered the Korean War in June 1951. “We did carrier screening duty, did coastal patrols, and provided naval gun fire for the soldiers and marines on shore. We won 3 battle stars,” recounted Knecht. He left the Epperson in March, 1952. An impressive wall-mounted shadow box showcases a chest full of medals attesting to Harry C. Knecht’s service to his country.
After the Korean War, Petty Officer 1st Class (Radarman) Harry C. Knecht resumed his life as a Post Office employee in Allentown. It was there that he saw the letter that eventually led him to meet Harry W. Knecht, now a retired Bethlehem firefighter living in Allentown.
Five years ago, when they met for the first time, they shared stories about their service aboard the Epperson. The veteran destroyer men became friends and still see each other occasionally.
Harry W. Knecht, now 66, is a graduate of Catasauqua High School. His Navy experience began when he enlisted in June 1959 in Allentown and went to Great Lakes, Illinois for training. After duty in several posts and stations around the world he was sent to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There he sailed with the destroyer USS Epperson as a Petty Officer 2nd Class (Boilerman).
“One of our most memorable missions was to stand by in support of Astronaut Walter Schirra who splashed down with the Apollo IV space mission in 1962,”said Harry W. “I had the same blood type as Wally Schirra, therefore I could not eat for 24 hours prior to splash time in case my blood was needed for Wally.”
“In 1961, recalled Harry W., “the Eppe picked up three Air Force divers and the important piece, the nose cone, from Discoverer 29 three hundred miles north of Oahu.” “A support team photographer gave me a NASA shoulder patch when I found his lens cap that he had lost in the bilges,” Harry said.
“Another exciting time”, he laughed, “was when we got torpedoed by one of our own submarines! The Eppe was steaming off the coast of Hawaii and offering itself as a target for our subs to practice launching [inert] torpedoes. The sub usually set the depth of the ‘fish’ deep enough to clear the hull of the ship by going underneath it. On this occasion the ‘fish’ surfaced and hit the starboard side. It struck an I-beam which prevented the torpedo from piercing the skin of the ship and causing havoc inside. There was more damage to everyone’s pride than there was damage to the ship.”
Harry W. Knecht now works part time as a City Center Monitor in Bethlehem.
Though they had no idea when they met that they were related, the two Harry Knechts have since discovered that they are descended from Peter Knecht, a Hession soldier who settled in Pennsylvania after the Revolutionary War.
The USS Epperson was named in honor of U. S. Marine Corps private Harold Glenn Epperson killed on Saipan when he saved the lives of his fellow marines by covering a hand grenade with his body.
On her second tour of duty off the coast of Korea, she earned the nickname “The Interim Mayor of Wonson Harbor” for her dominance of those waters while shelling enemy positions from Wonson Harbor, according to an on-line history of the ship.
The USS Epperson, in January 1954, served as a monitor ship for the detonation of six nuclear devices at the Bikini and Eniwetok test sites in the Pacific Ocean.
The warship was decommissioned in 1973. She was rescued from moth balls in 1977 and sold to the Pakistani navy where she served as the Taimur (D-166). Pakistan decommissioned the Taimur in 1999 and sunk her as a target ship in 2000.

One Day On Tarawa It All Made Sense

By Doug Graves © 2007

Originally published in Semper Fi Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008 issue

“One day on Tarawa it all made sense,” said General Alfred M. Gray, recounting the words of a former battalion commander, speaking of his former doubts about the value of the annual observance that Marines at every post and station around the world hold in such high regard.
The guest of honor at the 232nd Marine Corps Birthday Ball in Seoul was recalling the words of then Lieutenant Colonel Mike Ryan speaking at a Marine Corps Birthday remembrance in 1953. Gray was a young lieutenant and a company commander in Korea with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines at the end of the Korean War. At Tarawa, then Major Ryan had been awarded the Navy Cross in one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the Marines.
“We do three things at our Marine Corps birthday,” said General Gray, retired 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps, dressed in his trademark formal camouflage dinner jacket, “We remember our dead and our traditions--we remember our comrades who have made great sacrifice; that’s very, very important for all of our Marines to do that. We get together and have some camaraderie . . . and tighten up the bonds that, we think, make Marines special. And the third thing and most important part of the Marine Corps Birthday Ball is that--all you Marines who are here tonight--that you dedicate yourselves again to the future and to do the very best you can for the greatest nation on earth.”
General Gray went on to acknowledge the Korean guests and recalled their great sacrifices during the Korean War. He expressed his faith in the U S - ROK friendship as a “bond that will never be broken. That bond tells you something. It says that we can get together when there is conflict.”
Referring to the current war on terrorism, his voice resolute and his bearing every inch a battle leader, he said, “We can get together and we can prevail. We will prevail!”
The General concluded his remarks urging his Marines to “Take care of your selves, take care of each other and, as we say in the nation’s corps of Marines, ‘Semper Fidelis!’”
At every table men came to their feet in a thunderous and raucous applause giving good evidence that this old Commandant still commands the respect, admiration and, perhaps, even the love of his fellow Marines.
General and Mrs. Gray had arrived in Korea just a couple days before. They had a full week of obligations ahead of them.
As they flew into Korea the rugged Deokjeok Islands off the west coast of Korea were their first glimpse of the Land of the Morning Calm as the KAL flight began its descent into Incheon International Airport. Late morning sunlight slanted in, back lighting the fog-shrouded islands and giving the scene a golden yellow glow appropriate for the Yellow Sea below.
Light fog obscured shorelines but still revealed the flat, calm bay where, in 1950, a great naval armada was poised to strike one of history’s great strategic victories.
Gray was a private in 1950, having been just sworn in at New York City by Medal of Honor holder Major Louis H. Wilson. He had begun an illustrious career that would elevate him to the commandancy of the Marine Corps. Gray, like Wilson, would one day also be known as a “warrior commandant”.
General Gray and his wife, Jan Gray, were guests of the Korean Veteran’s Association and of the commanding general of the Marine Corps Forces in Korea. They had been invited as part of the KVA’s Re-visit Korea program. Since 1975 the program has been bringing veterans of the 21 nations who won what the KVA proudly calls the “Forgotten Victory.”
General Gray holds many post-retirement positions on corporate and academic boards but he is proud to be the Honorary National Commandant of the Marine Corps League. “I am the first commandant to hold that post since General Lejuene,” he said, referring to the Marine Corps’ legendary 13th commandant, Major General John A. Lejeune.
“I’m proud to be a part of the Marine Corps League,” he said in a conversation in the KAL lounge at Dulles International Airport prior to his flight to Korea. “They do fantastic work supporting [Marine] wounded all around the country. They personify the idea of ‘once a Marine, always a Marine.’ They provide tremendous support to wounded Marines with their Semper Fi Fund.”
On his first day in Korea General Gray had lunch with the Marines at the Navy Club at Yongson Army Garrison. There, the former commandant seemed to be in his most comfortable element—with fellow Marines
Major General Frank Panter, head of Marine Forces, Korea, invited General Gray to join him at an intelligence briefing and a Korea update at his headquarters.
After the briefing, the Marines around the conference table enjoyed talking with General Gray. They listened with rapt attention as the former commandant delivered what could have been a post graduate course in the art of being a Marine. Amphibious operations: “We come from the sea—other people come over the sea.” Expeditionary warfare: “Expeditionary warfare means light enough to get there, heavy enough to win.” On building alliances: “You’ve got to be with them and share their hardships.” Reflecting on being one of the service chiefs: “Only one is a ‘commandant’—the Commandant commands the Marine Corps--the others have titles like ‘chief of staff.’”
“What are some of the things you are most proud of?” asked Colonel Douglas Fegenbush, the Deputy Commander for Marine Forces, Korea.
“One of the things we tried to do was turn the Marine Corps loose; to show that we could do more. There has been a greatly increased understanding of the capabilities of Marine generals in the last 20 years.”
“And,” General Gray said, “I wanted a Marine Corps University.” In keeping with his interest in the professional military education of officers, staff non-commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers, he had established the ‘Commandant’s Reading List,’ an extensive list of books that every Marine leader is expected to read.
By the next morning the Alexandria, Virginia-based Military Historical Tours group had arrived in Seoul with a strong contingent of Marine Corps League members. They joined General Gray and staffers from the United Nations Command for breakfast and for a current assessment of the political and military situation in Korea. Then as the weather rapidly deteriorated, they boarded buses and drove to Panmunjom in the DMZ.
Once arrived at Camp Bonifas, the rain reinforced the fog, restricting vision in every direction to a few hundred yards.
The tour group moved to Observation Post Dora which in good weather offers a panoramic view of the DMZ near Panmunjom. But today there was little to see as the rain and fog combined to limit observation to the huge 3-dimensional map table in the lecture hall. After a briefing the veterans went to pay homage to their fallen comrades at the grey, stone U. S. War Memorial at Imjingak.
As the crowd of veterans formed a semi-circle in front of the memorial, General Gray said, in a clear voice, “Can we have a moment of silence.” Then as the National Anthem started to play, he and his fellow veterans, many of them Marines, stood at attention, their hands over their hearts, remembering their comrades, some of whom had fallen within sight of the memorial.
General Gray, who had fought in the “Outpost Wars,” disregarding the steady rain and refusing an offered umbrella, then laid a ceremonial wreath at the memorial.
“It was quite touching,” said Gerald Ravino, a veteran flame tank commander who had also fought in the “Outpost Wars,” the struggle for tactical advantage that raged while peace talks were being held in Panmunjom. “I lost it a little bit when I found the names of some of the guys that I went to boot camp with on the memorial,” said Gerald Ravino. Ravino, a member of the Marine Corps League and co-author of a book about flame tank actions at the DMZ, was himself injured here.
That evening the Korean War veterans in the group were themselves honored by the KVA at a reception and banquet. They received something that, for the most part, never happened when they came home from the Korean War--be genuinely recognized and thanked for their service in liberating South Korea.
“My dear comrades-in-arms,” said retired Major General Seh Jik Park. “When war threatened you came and sacrificed. On behalf of the Korean people, thank you for your dedication. You deserve the noble title of ‘Ambassador for Peace’.
“You won the war. You will be in the hearts of the Korean people forever. We will do our best to repay our debt to you.”
General Gray addressed the American and the Korean war veterans. “You taught the Communists a valuable lesson,” he said. Then General Gray and 33 other veterans of the Korean War were invited to the dais and awarded a medal commemorating their service over 50 years ago.
“It was humbling,” said Raymond Miller, a Marine from Hutchinson, Kansas. “It gave me goose bumps.” Miller was speaking of the medal ceremony and his experiences since returning to Korea. “The whole trip has been heart warming. It is amazing what they have done.” Later, Miller and his wife, Dena, were shopping in Itaewon when a Korean seamstress asked him when he had last been in Korea. Miller, who had made the landing at Incheon as a BAR man with Able Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, told the woman that he had come in 1950. “She hugged me and bowed. She said, ‘Thank you.’”
The following day, November 10, the veterans went to Dongjak-gu in Seoul to visit the National Cemetery. There they honored the Korean patriots who died in the service of their country.
General Gray, as senior officer present, took the lead. From the great, blue tile-roofed gate building, he led the veterans up the broad avenue flanked by Republic of Korea military honor guards. For almost 200 yards, in measured step, they marched up to the shrine where a memorial wreath waited. There, amid the strains of the Korean National Anthem and under a blue sky, prayers were offered for those interred in the hallowed grounds. The General advanced the wreath to its place of honor. Before starting on this journey he had said, “I want to show my respect to the South Koreans.” Mission accomplished.
The Marine Corps League members and other veterans boarded their buses and headed toward Incheon Harbor and the Incheon Landing Operations Hall.
At the museum a collection of photographs, dioramas, weapons and uniforms told the story of that dramatic day and night of September 15, 1950.
Luther Leguire of Lake City, Florida paused beside a fully restored and painted amtrac where he recalled coming ashore in the first wave with 1st Marines as an infantryman. Ten days later Leguire gained national recognition when he was photographed in the act of replacing a North Korean flag flying over the U. S. Consulate with an American flag. By November 7th he was wounded by a bullet through his knee.
The following day at the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, the largest memorial of its kind in the world, brought Marine Corps League members Dick Oxnam and John Camara face to face with their past. Oxnam had been a first lieutenant platoon commander of 2nd Recon Platoon, Reconnaissance Company near the MLR (Main Line of Resistance—now known as the DMZ) and John Camara had been one of his squad leaders. “First Platoon was assigned to get live prisoners,” said Camara.
It was 2000 [hours] on February 27, 1953 when the platoon crossed the MLR. But First Platoon walked into the kill zone of some Chinese machine guns and was cut up badly in the initial burst, then pinned down.
“The bright moonlight reflecting of the snow made it almost as bright as daylight,” said Oxnam, his voice full of emotion.
“Second Lieutenant [later Major General and Medal of Honor recipient] Jim Day and I took our platoons out to help get First Platoon back in. “Gunnery Sergeant Joe Errgang and two others were missing. Enemy fire was intense and we were exposing ourselves to more casualties. We searched for them until 1400 [the next day] but never found them.”
“Corporal Jerry Day was my radio man. He was killed [during that operation] when a mortar round dropped into our fox hole,” said Oxnam.
Oxnam found the names he was looking for. They were two of the thousands honored in the long Korean War Memorial hallway.
“ERRGANG, JOSEPH R.”
“DAY, GERALD”
Oxnam looked at the names for a while, his fingers running slowly over the raised letters. Then the two comrades-in-arms slowly walked out of the hall of heroes.
The veterans wrapped up their visit to the Land of Morning Calm, peaceful now. But before they left Korea, a group of young school children on a field trip saw Oxnam and his wife on the street. A teacher asked if he was a Marine, and then she explained to the kids that Oxnam was, indeed, a Marine.
“The school children broke ranks and ran up to us, hugging us,” Oxnam said. “They said ‘Thank you, sir, for saving our country.’”