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A Veteran Liberator Remembers... Walter R. Bushey’s Reflections On WWII

Bristol Resident Walter R. Bushey.
photo by Mike Cameron
Bristol Resident Walter R. Bushey.

Tuesday November 9, 2010

By Mike Cameron

    During this Veteran's Day week it's important to remember what those who have served and those who are serving in uniform have done to allow us all to enjoy this remarkable freedom Americans hold so close .  

    Bristol resident and World War II Combat Veteran, Walter R. Bushey knows first hand the raw and unadorned truth about this precious gift.  

    Sgt. Bushey was part of the U.S. Army 14th Armored Division and landed with his unit on the shores of Marseilles in Southern France 29 October 1944.  As a 19 year old non commissioned officer, Mr. Bushey would soon be directing men during some of the most vicious and violent combat of the war.  “The Germans who had just recently occupied the area where we were, had run away and were regrouping further north,” he remembers.  

    Mr. Bushey's unit, the 19th Armored Infantry Battalion first moved to an area around Nice in southern France.   The “Liberators” were on the march north and their mission was to restore freedom.

    “We were headed for Alsace-Lorraine and the going was very rough with steep mountain roads and cliffs especially for our tanks and equipment,” he remembers.  By early December Mr Bushey along with thousands of other GI's were completing fall and winter battles around the mountain towns they pushed into and Nazi defenses began to crack.  

The Battle Of The Bulge

    The Alsatian Plain was reached and the 14 Headquarters Combat Command R was about to make it's main move against the Siegfried Line in force.  What the Americans did not know was that the Germans were massing for a monstrous counterattack as ordered by a man Winston Churchill had once characterized as “a little, filthy, bloodthirsty gutter-snipe.”  His name of course was Adolph Hitler.  

    Hitler had become delusional.  His fantasy included a pipe-dream that the allied coalition would dissolve when his Nazis elite forces including crack SS armored and armored infantry divisions  applied pressure with their superior “Tiger” tanks and ruthless “SS storm-troopers.”  Their surprise offensive was dubbed the “Battle of the Bulge.”  Walter R. Bushey was there to see it and would have to fight for his life along with his brothers in arms.

    “The Bulge was unexpected.  There was snow and it was cold.  The weather was bad and we couldn't get supplies in from the air. It was socked-in.   The Germans used their Tiger tanks and artillery and the battle continued until we were able to use air power for supplies and to counter the attack.  We had summer weight gear and men were loosing fingers and toes to the cold.”  The 14th Armored Division held and stopped the breakthrough that Hitler demanded.  Mr. Bushey and hundreds of others were able to restored their depleted defensive lines, regroup, find some nutrition and attack.

    Americans began to move further and further into Germany and what they found was horrific.

The Dachau Experience

    “We knew that there were many P.O.W. Camps in Germany but nothing would prepare us for what we saw in the Nazi Death Camp at Dachau,” Mr. Bushey began.  “32,000 prisoners were liberated and many others had been reduced to piles of rotting corpses.  There were corpses every where.  The German SS knew we were coming and many of them ran away and some tried to disguise themselves as prisoners.  Here were these reasonably well feed SS guards trying to make themselves look like prisoners who's bodies had been reduced to skin and bones by starvation.  The guards would prepare potatoes and give the prisoners the potato peelings.  They in turn would make a kind of soup with the peelings.  It was a very thin broth and perhaps the prisoners would kill a rat to add a bit of meat to it if they were fortunate to find one.  The inmates were delirious knowing that they were being set free.  A-may-de-can!, A-may-de-can! Freedom...Freedom!  They would say...many with voices so weakened by months of starvation they many could only whisper their gratitude.  We went into the barracks and just could not believe that any human would do this to another.  People were stacked almost from floor to ceiling many were dead and many had been dead for some time.  The stench was unimaginable. One fellow looked at me and said Freedom and then he died,  too far gone to get out from his slot.  Everyone was clothed in filthy rags.  We saw the ovens, some still containing the partially burned corpses of those who were unable to be cremated before our arrival.  Once some of the healthier inmates realized what was going on they set upon some of their SS captors and killed them throwing their corpses on some of the piles of rotting corpses in the compound,”  he remembers.    

    “In the city of Dachau many of the citizens were steadfast in their denial of any knowledge of what was going on just outside town.  Many refused to even believe that the death camp existed.  They were brought out and shown.  After seeing the carnage one Burger Meister and his wife went home and hung themselves,  I don't believe that I've never mentioned that particular incident to anyone since it happened,”  Mr. Bushey said looking this reporter right in the eye as we noticed that both of us were holding back tears.  Even General Patton as hard a man as he was, wretched and needed some time to regain his composure after witnessing Dachau,” Mr. Bushey remembers.

    Mr. Bushey survived the war, although wounded twice.  He was awarded the Purple Heart and numerous campaign ribbons.  For a man who thought he was going to join the Army Air Corps and then was sent to the regular Army, his European war experience was extraordinary and as a civilian he continued his considerable work ethic, working 50-years in the areo-space industry with many of its top companies including Lockeed/ Martin, General Dynamics and Simmonds now Goodrich in Vergennes  as an engineer.  “One of the companies sent my wife and I to see a Space Shuttle launch, all expenses paid.  We really enjoyed that.”  

    Walter R Bushey personifies what motivated American Veterans have done for all of us and what they are capable of.  He and his wife Shirley have been married 62-years.  The Bushey's have 7-children, 15-grandchildren and 9 great-great grandchildren.

    Mr. Bushey is an avid reader and a wonderful conversationalist.  For his service to our country and his community, Mr. Bushey represents the gold standard of what we Americans are capable of.  He deserves nothing less than our profound gratitude.   

 


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