Oral history interview of Howard H. Hyle

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Howard H. Hyle
Creator:: Lacy, Margaret
Hyle, Howard H., 1925-
Date of Original:: 2004-02-03
Subject:: Operation Clipper, 1944
Atomic bomb
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons, American
Hyle, Mary Catherine McQuaid, 1921-1999
Kissinger, Henry, 1923-
Offerman, Willi
Beiderwieden, Heinz
Hitler-Jugend
College of William and Mary
Johns Hopkins University
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 84th, Battalion, 3rd
Stalag VII A
Stalag III B
Stalag III A
Coca-Cola Company
United States. Army. Airborne Corps, XVIII
United States. Army. Airborne Division, 11th
United States. Army. Regimental Combat Team, 187th
GULag NKVD
Geilenkirchen, Battle of, 1944
Hitler Youth
Location:: Czech Republic, Elbe River, 50.0319222, 15.1943499
Germany, Bad Zwischenahn, 53.185155, 8.0034877
Germany, Brachelen, 51.0063169, 6.2388464
Germany, Elbe River, 52.4344639, 11.6813919
Germany, Fürstenberg, 51.7311597, 9.4028388
Germany, Krefeld, 51.3331205, 6.5623343
Germany, Luckenwalde, 52.0902045, 13.1741882
Germany, Müllendorf, 50.9894785, 6.1690589
Germany, Truenbritzen
Netherlands, Geleen, 50.9673322, 5.8277007
Netherlands, Gulpen, 50.80313155, 5.88621123978734
United Kingdom, England, Andover, 51.2157184, -1.4724734547348
United Kingdom, England, Newbury, 51.3908169, -1.32855218933302
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Chattahoochee County, Fort Benning, 32.35237, -84.96882
United States, Illinois, Champaign County, Champaign, 40.11642, -88.24338
United States, Kentucky, Hardin County, Fort Knox, 37.89113, -85.96363
United States, Louisiana, Rapides Parish, Camp Claiborne (historical), 31.07056, -92.54889
United States, New Jersey, Camp Kilmer, 40.4808743, -74.4601235
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Howard Hopkins Hyle recalls his experiences in World War II. He was in college when he went to Richmond, Virginia, to test for the Navy's V-12 program. He passed the tests but failed the physicals, so they recommended him for the Army's Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). He chose to be drafted, was tested again, and was accepted into the ASTP. During his training, Eisenhower required infantry troops receive glider training. They entered Europe on Omaha Beach on LCIs and followed Patton across France. While in the Netherlands, he was quartered in a Carmelite monastery, where he attended Mass every morning and had philosophical discussions with one of the monks. This particular monk was also part of the underground and had to be spirited out of the country to Kansas. He describes battles he was in, as well as the circumstances and details of his capture and release. He describes his two injuries. He recalls returning to Germany and locating the soldier who captured him and the time they spent together, including visiting the site of the capture. He remembers the camp being overtaken by Russian troops and recalls that their living conditions were almost worse under the Russians. He reports that they were told by reporters that negotiations for repatriation between Americans and Russians had broken down; the Russians wanted citizens who had asked for asylum. He describes communications with home. After the war, he was sent to a rehabilitation center in Miami (Fla.) and received orders to report to Camp Stoneman (Calif.), but "thanks to Mr. Truman's decision" he did not have to go to Japan. At the war's end, he opted to stay in the reserves and was quickly called up for the Korean War; he held a staff position and remained stateside. He shares his perspective of the effect of the war and how it informed his life. He recalls his professional and personal life after the war. He recalls a visit to an American cemetery in Margraaten, his encounters with the Dutch people, and their gratitude towards Americans. He describes the gratitude people have shown him for his service.
Howard Hopkins Hyle was an infantryman in Europe during World War II.
HOWARD HYLE WWII Oral Histories Atlanta History Center February 3, 2004 Interviewer: Margaret Lacy Transcriber: Joyce Dumas [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: . . . February, the third, and we're at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia. And this is the Veterans History Project. My name is Margaret Lacy. And Mr. Hyle is speaking to us on this tape. Thank you, Mr. Hyle. Hyle: Thank you, Margaret. Interviewer: Well, we can go back to the beginning. Where were you drafted or did you enlist? Hyle: In the winter of nineteen forty-three, the Army and Air Force Reserves were called up. And not being one of either of those, I went up to Richmond from the College of William and Mary and took extensive testing with the…hoping to qualify for the Navy's V-12 program, which was an officer development program. And I passed everything, but I flunked the physical. And they informed me that I was qualified for the Army's A-12 program, which became known as ASTP, Army Specialized Training Program. However, I elected to wait to be drafted in August of forty-three and I was sent immediately to Fort Benning in Georgia where the infantry and paratroop training took place. And we were then tested again to see if we still qualified and I was sent back to Johns Hopkins University in an engineering program. Unfortunately, I only lasted a semester because the whole program was terminated because of the need for riflemen. So, three thousand of the hundred and ten thousand of us in colleges and universities, who were also with the V-12, the Navy program, and the Air Force program in schools, we were sent back as fillers to infantry outfits. And I was with quite a group. Henry Kissinger was in our group of three thousand. Steve Forbes was a staff sergeant with me in the Third Battalion of the Eighty-Fourth Infantry Division. There were all these fellas that had qualified. We had to have a pretty good score on the testing. So then we were trained vigorously in Louisiana at Camp Claiborne from about April until August. That included a month of glider training. Mr. Eisenhower had insisted that any infantry divisions coming over after that…after D-Day have glider training in case they needed troops to go in that way. And so, that's about it. Interviewer: Where did…where…shipped, I guess that'd be the word. Where did you go from there? Hyle: Well, we were shipped from Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, and then over to a glider base at Newberry, England. And then subsequently to another base at…the name I won't rem…Andover. Andover, England. And subsequently, we were sent to Omaha Beach, you know, months…this would have been now…we're in nineteen forty-four. So this would have been…let's see...June, July, August, September, four months after D-Day. But we had the somewhat dubious pleasure of going in just as if we were on D-Day assault. We went on, you know, the LCIs and climbed down the side of the ship and jumped into smaller boats and went up on the beach. And it was still active. There were mines still sown, you know, as Achtung. Minen. Then you had to be very careful. We then proceeded to follow Mr. Patton across Europe, or across France. And were housed in…our whole division was housed near Gulpen, G-U-L-P-E-N, the Netherlands. We were actually in a town called, Geleen, G-E-L-E-E-N. And they put my company in a Carmelite monastery and hid us, waiting for this next big attack, which was in the middle of November. And by the way, the young…a young monk, these were Carmelite monks, the young monk that I befriended while I was there…I went to Mass every morning with him. The little chapel was right there. I have been in touch with [him] since. He was spirited out of the country because he was in the underground. I had some difficulty finding him after the war and learned that he had gone to Kansas and changed his name. I still carry a “Grillton [phonetic] und Holland”, which is a souvenir that he gave me. And fairly recently, I'd say about six years ago, I found him again. He's now back in Geleen and he's had a stroke, but he…and he didn't remember me. He remembered the incident. But we had a lovely Sunday afternoon together after Mass at a local church. And he was very, very thoughtful about the circumstances in those days and his role and our role. And you know, blessed me and said he was sure that I was one of the lucky ones that, you know…so that was it. Interviewer: He was very [inaudible], wasn't he? Hyle: Yes. So after we…you want me to go on with the chronology? Interviewer: Not necessarily. Hyle: All right. Interviewer: You want to get to something [inaudible]. Hyle: Well, the chronology probably fits and then we could circle back to some incidents, if that's all right. We…in the middle of November, we attacked Geilenkircshen, Germany. And there's a marvelous book on that written by a man by the name of Ken Ford, called The Assault on Germany: The Battle for Geilenkirschen, which is spelled G-E-I-L-E-N-K-I-R-S-C-H-E-N. It was a railway center about twelve miles north of Aucken. And we took that in a couple of days and then we ran into a lot of trouble because we were on the German border and there were pillboxes and mines everywhere. Shoe mines that burst under your feet and big mines for the tanks. I was with what they now call an assault company and we made a night attack after several unsuccessful attacks during the day and reached a little farm village called Nullendorf, that's N-U-L-L-E-N-D-O-R-F. And we lost a lot of people in various ways; wounded, some killed and a number of us were captured because we'd gotten out ahead of our tanks. The tanks couldn't get through the mines. And the German Tenth Regiment of the Ninth Panzer Division, which was an experienced group of soldiers from Russia, who had also fought in Holland during Operation Market Garden. Very experienced. But also a lot of young people like me. So I suddenly found myself in a wine cellar in an old farm courtyard. Couldn't get out because they had the only way out blocked with a vehicle. It was not a tank. It was like a personnel carrier with a twenty millimeter gun on it. And that gun had already killed our company commander and the radioman. I got my first wound there. Very minor, but it hurt like the dickens. It was a hot piece of metal that bounced off a wall and hit me on the front of my shin. So we found ourselves captured and I'd like to come back to that, because the soldier who captured me under those rather unusual circumstances is now a personal friend. And I'd like to tell you that story. Interviewer: With that injury, could you walk? Hyle: Oh yeah. It was like somebody hit me in the leg with a baseball bat. And there were men around me that were, you know. One man, when we got into prison camp, had a hole through his chest and was, you know, it just deflated his lung. Didn't hit anything serious. So, a lot of fellas in different stages of capture. So we were…they marched us, in the middle of the night under both German and American shellfire because there was some confusion about who had taken this area. As a matter of fact, it was bad enough so that they…the soldier who captured me pushed me into a house and we sat under a beautiful German dining table for about twenty-five minutes, during the time which I tried to convince him to come with me cause I figured the war was about over. Well, they took us to Brachelen, which is B-R-A-C-H-E-L-E-N, about three and a half miles from where we were captured. And we spent the night there in an old factory. And the next morning, we…they put us on trucks and took us to Krefeld, K-R-E-F-E-L-D. It was at this place that they interrogated some of us. And we didn't have any information and you were instructed to only give your name, rank and serial number. Interviewer: At that point, tell us your rank. Hyle: I was a sergeant in an infantry platoon. And so we went to Krefeld, then they moved us by railroad boxcars for three days under…we were strafed by our own people cause the boxcars were not marked and finally got to a prison camp, Seven A, was the designation, near Hanover. Interviewer: Hanover's a big city. Hyle: Big city. Well, this was…I've forgotten the name of the city north of there, the village where they had this prison camp and it was a sorting area. Here they separated the privates from the sergeants. The officers had already been separated. And they sent the officers off in one direction and in my case, there were twelve of us, were non-commissioned officers who were put on a train in rather nice accommodations. We didn't know what was going to happen. Beautiful sunny day in December and they took us with box lunches. Took us all the way across Germany to Berlin, and that's the second incident that I'd like to share with you. Interviewer: All right. Hyle: From Berlin we went to Three B, which was at Furstenburg, that's F-U-R-S-T-E-N-B-U-R-G, that's on the Oder River right at the Polish border. And we were there until about the early part of January when the Russians attacked and they moved something like five thousand of us for two…three days and several nights in the icy snowy back south of Berlin to another camp, this time just huge tents. And that camp was Three A and the town there nearby was Luckenwalde, and that's L-U-C-K-E-N-W-A-L-D-E. After some time, April the twenty-six, Marshall Zukov's army over ran the camp. In the meantime, the guards had left to help defend Berlin. And with some difficulty, we were able to get back across the Elbe River. And as an interesting side note, I crossed the Elbe River on a pontoon bridge and walked right into the encampment of my battalion that I'd been with months before and knew some of the people. It was kind of interesting. If you'd like to circle back and pick up the night we were captured. We'd been in the dark, fighting all through this little village and we got mixed up with some Canadians and another unit from my division. And some of the fellas hid out in houses and were…tried to get away from this “Panzer”. “Panzer,” of course, means tank. And they were very accomplished, experienced soldiers and finally the firing stopped, the shellfire stopped and a German soldier appeared at the top of these stairs and ordered us to come out. Well, I figured that if I waited, you know, the number of people in front of me, that maybe they wouldn't come in and look. Well, I decided…I changed my mind after about five minutes. It was so quiet and I thought, “Well, I'll just come on out.” Somewhere within sight of the last man going out. And here was this young German soldier that I could see in the light of a flare and he put his rifle in my stomach and said, “[in German]”, which means “Hands up”. And… Interviewer: Did you know that then? Hyle: Oh yeah. I have a little German capability. So by now the other fellas that I'd been captured with were all up the street and then the shellfire started again. So he pushed me into the nearest house and we went…we were hiding under this big table. All I remember of him at that time was that he was very young and I was only nineteen. I later learned he was seventeen. But he'd already won the Iron Cross. He was a decorated young soldier. So he…when the shelling stopped, we went on up and they collected some more prisoners, some more Canadian prisoners. Because as I said, this whole area was mined and tanks couldn't get through and so they were…they had a field day. You can't fight a tank with a rifle unless you have some special device. So that was the last I saw of him. He marched us--he along with two or three other soldiers--marched us this three and a half miles to Brachelen and it was the end of it. Well, years later, I was working for Coca-Cola International and subsequently with a consulting firm over there, living in Mostrie. And on a weekend, I was often over there six, seven, eight weeks at a time. On the weekends in November, snowy, cold…I called a name that I'd been given who was the…if you would, the Franklin Garrett of that area. The local historian. He was a former railroader who had made it his business to learn about all the battles that had been fought in that area during World War Two. And so I…I'd been given his name by another of my comrades who wrote this book, another excellent book called, Lest We Forget, written by Dan McCollum, who is a retired lawyer and lobbyist in Jackson, Mississippi. He'd given me…he'd done quite a bit of research and he'd given me his book and gave me this name, Willi Offerman, W-I-L-L-I, Offerman, O-F-F-E-R-M-A-N. So I called Willi and told him who I was and he was delighted, spoke excellent English. And I drove over on a Sunday afternoon. It's a very Catholic area and so they'd been to Mass and had their schnapps and their early dinner. And I spent the whole afternoon with him. Had a four-story house and we went up and down the steps because he collected quite a bit. Well, he asked my story and I told him and he said…I'm elipsing now, but he said, “I know a German soldier who describes this situation just the way you did.” And there was some other exceptional circumstances that would take too long to explain, but it was enough to differentiate. Interviewer: It was your seventeen-year-old? Hyle: It was. He'd come to…Willi did seminars as does Franklin, or did. And he done a seminar in Goutingkirk [phonetic]. And it was advertised or written about in the papers and my captor, Heinz Beiderwieden, that's H-E-I-N-Z, Beiderwieden, B-E-I-D-E-R-W-I-E-D-E-N. Heinz Beiderwieden, a retired banker from Lingen, Germany, but now living in Bad Zwischenham and that's B-A-D, Zwischenham is Z-W-I-S-C-H-E-N-H-A-M, up on the North Sea. And so he'd been to the seminar, gave his name to Willi and said, “I'd like to know when you do this again.” And they had time for coffee and a snack and he told him his story and that's how Willi put us together. Well that afternoon, Willi said to me—this is November of nineteen ninety-five—“Would you like to meet the German soldier I think was in the same situation as you were in?” And I didn't believe that could be possible. So I said yes. So Willi is a very prompt fella and he got on the phone and called Heinz up in Bad Zwischenham and Heinz said he'd be down the next day. Interviewer: Did you remember him? Hyle: No. No. As a matter of fact, I really didn't believe that this was factual. Interviewer: Okay, go ahead. Hyle: So, he came down the next day. I've got the days wrong. I was over there on Saturday and it was Sunday after Mass that I went over and as I…it was a cold, spitting snow, another bad day. No one outside. It was about two o'clock and Germans are always on time. And so I parked the car I was using and I saw this man coming around the corner in a warm-looking Navy pea suit or pea coat, like the Navy boys wear. And I walked up to him cause I was sure it was the person and so I said, “Are you Heinz Beiderwieden?” He said, “Jah”. He said, “Du bist Howard Hylee?” Cause his English is worse than my German. So we had a…and so we shook hands and went into Willi's house. And to make a long story short, we talked for three hours and in the last hour, we got in my car, the three of us, and drove over—just five miles—to Mullendorf, Germany. Where I was captured. That's M-U-L-L-E-N-D-O-R-F. And I told Heinz what I remembered of that night's ugliness and he…no, I did it the other way around. I said, “Heinz, tell me what happened.” And it was clear. Then I told him and he remembered me and going under the dining room table. And so, in January of ninety-six, I was over in Bremen doing some work and I called him in Bad Zwischenham, which is just an hour or so away. And he invited me over. So I spent a long weekend with him and his wife, Ogna, and his two boys, who are about my boys' ages now, about forty-five. Interviewer: What I was wondering, if you knew things were winding up and I'm wondering if he did when he described the ferocity of the resistance. Did they know that things were winding down? Hyle: I don't believe that he had, by his…the short conversation we had and remember his age, I don't believe he knew how bad off it was. They weren't informed they way we were. And of course, I had just come over. So I had all…fresh information. And we used to kid the German guards in prison camp by saying, you know, “Hitler kaput!” He's finished. And they didn't want to talk about it. It was a serious matter. Interviewer: What did they do when they heard that? Hyle: Well, they didn't believe it for a start. But “kaput” could mean not only dead, but his reign, his regime is over. And the soldiers I was talking to, these were…almost all my captors were German infantry or Panzer troops who'd been wounded and were not well, you know. So that's how I got my second little wound. We were…when they were marching us from Furstenburg to Uberwalder in the ice and snow and so forth, they killed one of the American boys because he wouldn't get up. He was sick. And so we pushed our way to where this was going on and the German guard swung around and hit me in the mouth. Knocked some teeth out. So that qualified me for a second Purple Heart. Interviewer: I see here it says “combat infantry badge” and Bronze Star, Purple Heart and [inaudible]. Hyle: That second event that I brushed was in the Berlin railway station. And this is…this is such an unusual story that it borders on absolute unbelievability, but we pulled into the station just as the bombing started for that evening. It was daily. Twice daily. The British during the night and the Americans during the day. And so this was in time for the British. And as we went down into the “hautbenoff”, which is the name for “train station” in Germany, the bombing started and the train station deep underground was a bomb shelter. Not only that, but there were hundreds or maybe thousands of people milling and going about, getting trains to go from here to there. There were refugees who were working for the Germans because they had no choice. There were German soldiers on leave. There were family members. There were people, etcetera. It was chaos. And when our guard…when the bombing stopped, the trains suddenly all began to move and our guards, two, with the twelve of us, pushed us in the direction of what we later learned was a commuter train, connecting with another train. And I wasn't in any hurry. I figured that's his problem. And another sergeant had the same attitude and before we knew it, the ten got with the two guards and the doors closed. It was like a subway. And here we were in the middle of downtown Berlin in December of nineteen forty-four. We looked like the dickens. We hadn't shaved in days, maybe weeks. We had black triangles painted on our thighs, our trousers and the middle of our back as identified as prisoners. We probably were ripe and we had no money. George, the other man, to my knowledge, didn't speak any German. And my German was simply sparse. So he wanted to get on a train and go west. He was an ex-football player, freshman football player from Georgia Tech. Great big fella. And he wanted…he said, “We'll escape”. And I said, “Now hang on. The war's about over. We have no money. We don't speak German. We don't have any train tickets. We look like the dickens. We are Americans. How are we gonna get from downtown Berlin back to the front lines?” Well, there was some reason in that. And he wasn't always reasonable. I said, “Let's go over and sit down”. So we went over and sat down on a bench. Meantime, people…and he said, “Okay, what do we do?” I said, “I think we need to find those guards. I'm no hero. And I don't know what damage we could do without getting killed for a purpose. They wouldn't even know we were here.” So about that time, another commuter train backed into position. The doors opened up. It looked to me like it was going the same direction. We got on the train and it was suddenly packed. There was one seat and George said, “You go back and sit in that seat. I'll stand by the door and every time the doors open up, I'll see if I can find the guards.” So I went back and sat down, right across from a “Hitler yungen”, a real angry fifteen-year-old. And he looked at me as the train started up and he said, “Du bist ein criesch gefungener [phonetic]?” “You are a prisoner of war.” And I looked at him like I couldn't understand and he raised his voice and punched the man next to him, a civilian or maybe a refugee. And he didn't want any part of it. And I just kept looking like, “I don't know what you're saying”. But he got so irritated he got up. There was a German sergeant, a [inaudible], sitting over here and he was quite decorated, wound stripes, and he looked liked he…he looked badly. So the young man, the “Hitler yungen”, told him that I was a prisoner of war and looked like I was escaping. And I can't tell you exactly what the sergeant said, but in effect it was, “Get lost”. Well that irritated the boy no end. And so he… Interviewer: I think it was a good answer. Hyle: It was, wasn't it. Saved my life probably. So the young kid came back and sat down and he just glared at me. And about that time—it was pretty quick—George, who was up at the front, called my name. Now we didn't want to be recognized. We wanted to do this as quietly…but my last name is Hyle. Interviewer: Uh-oh. Hyle: Now it's the Finnish version, H-Y-L-E. But “Hyle” at the top of his voice meant everybody in the car turned around and looked at us and I didn't run, I didn't want to…but I walked as fast as I could, we got off the train and here were the two guards and the ten soldiers. And I think it saved our lives. We could have been wandering around in Berlin. Cause that was near the end of the war. So there were two little stories. Interviewer: Oh boy. That was as scary as being in the action almost. Hyle: Well, you know, it's strange. It's like…in that circumstance it was a high-speed adventure, where you didn't want to make any real mistakes, you know. And I was nineteen. George was twenty. Interestingly enough, back to the Heinz Beiderwieden story, while I was visiting with Heinz in Bad Zwischenham, I asked him what he did as a business occupation. And he told me that he'd done his apprentice work and had become a banker and worked his way up and ended up managing a bank in Lingen, that's L-I-N-G-E-N, Germany, which is north of Essen, about a couple of hours on the Dutch border. And I had just been in Lingen. Working for Coca-Cola I had met the owner, Clemens Vandenburg [phonetic], of a hundred-and-fifteen store fast-food chain called “Kocklauffle”, which means “cooking school” in German. And I said, “Do you know Clemens Vandenburg?” This is in Heinz's house in January of ninety…what did I say? Ninety-six. He said, “Oh, jah.” He said, “Clemens was one of my best customers.” So here is Clemens Vandenburg, who's been a visitor in my home in Atlanta. I'm visiting the soldier who captured me and they were business associates. It's really, really interesting. Interviewer: And I wonder what was going through his mind when y'all were under that table. Hyle: Yes, I do, too. I think he was… Interviewer: Didn't know whether to shoot you or not. Hyle: Well, you know, then I didn't know. I certainly wasn't gonna…he was smaller than me, but we were surrounded. There were German tanks parked down here and this personnel carrier with the heavy weapon on it and German soldiers milling around. There wasn't a lot you could do. Interviewer: Oh my. When you were in Germany or overseas did the mail come through? Did you keep in touch with people back in the States? Hyle: Good question. They had a system. They had a system of mail…but I didn't bring it with me. We were able to write little letters which were censored by the Germans and unfortunately during that period of time from when I was captured, November the twenty-second about a month before the Battle of the Bulge. Interviewer: Forty-three? Hyle: Forty-four. Interviewer: Forty-four. Hyle: And so from that time, November twenty-two till I…till the Russians overran us, then it took us some weeks to get out. We were almost worse off with the Russians. They were drunk a lot and quite difficult. But I didn't get any mail. But my father did. And I thought I brought it with me, a copy of one of my little missives. Interviewer: They must have been worried. I don't think you had time to keep a personal diary, so should I ask about that? Hyle: I didn't. I didn't keep one. Interviewer: Do you recall the day your service ended? Hyle: Well, it was November of…the first time. It was November of forty-five and I opted, as it turned out it probably a mistake as far as I was concerned, but I opted at that moment of being…of leaving the Army to stay in the reserves. So I was assigned to the Eighteenth Airborne Corps in reserve, inactive. And I remember that day when we lined up and signed a piece of paper. And then the next thing I knew was…let's see how to put this together. On June the twenty-fifth, the North Koreans overran the thirty-eighth parallel. On June the thirtieth, nineteen fifty, I was married in Champaign, Illinois, and one week later, I got a airmail, special-delivery, registered letter to report back to the Eleventh Airborne. So I was recalled to the Eleventh Airborne, hundred and eighty-seventh regiment. By a set of circumstances that were good for me, I ended up in a staff job and did not go to Korea or fight in that war. At that time, I got out again in November, of nineteen fifty-one. And this time I didn't stay in the reserves [chuckles]. Interviewer: I didn't need to ask that one. [laughs] Hyle: No. Interviewer: Did you benefit from the G.I. Bill? Hyle: Yes. Yes, I did. I went to…went back to William and Mary and with the little bit of time that I had accrued at Johns Hopkins, I was able to get through in three years. And then, because of…I had a small pension and I took other tests and qualified for graduate school. So I went back to…on out to the University of Illinois to do my graduate work. Interviewer: Are you active with a veterans' organization? Kyle: I was for quite a long time. I do belong and try to remain active with the ex-POWs. Very worthwhile group. Their mission is to help those who can't help themselves. And they put this out monthly and they have annual meetings. I also belong to the Eighty-Four Infantry Division's unit and they have annual meetings. And I've been to a number. They're all getting…I read somewhere there's seventeen hundred of us dying a day now from the different wars. And so these conventions are at once exhilarating and full of memories, nostalgic, but also sad because fellas are coming in on crutches and wheelchairs and…but it is kind of fun to go because you…they start telling these war stories and you sometimes wonder if they were even in the same earth as the battle…this wasn't the way I remembered it at all, you know. Well, you know, it's less enhancement or changing the facts and more of what that soldier saw at that moment. You know, he could have very well have been five yards away from me and seen a completely different set of circumstances. And that happened, you know. So it's… Interviewer: I bet you heard some. Hyle: Oh yeah. [inaudible] Interviewer: Do you want to tell any of those? Hyle: Well, I don't think they…I remember one of the sergeants that I worked with ended up being a postmaster in Lafayette, I believe, Lafayette, Louisiana. And he was interviewed by the local newspaper and he told his side of one of the battles we were in. And I remember calling one of my mates and saying, “I don't believe he was in the same war.” You know, he just saw things differently, you know. He didn't dress up his role, he just saw it differently. Interviewer: Right. How would you say your service and experiences affected your life? Hyle: Well, it was a major change. I was…it was a sudden confrontation with absolute stark reality. Prior to that I'd been one of two sons in a middle-class family in Maryland. I had very real plans to go on to the seminary and be a priest, an Episcopal priest in those days. I changed later. And that whole experience of leaving the cocoon, the home and suddenly with a lot of wonderful men, but under circumstances that I didn't know, changed my whole view. And then when I was called back for Korea, I had just started to work for the Coca-Cola Company and I was the only man…there might have been one other, called back from the company. So it changed my life because all of a sudden I was someone different than the hundreds that worked for the company. So when I came out, I think I got to the head of some lists because I was different. I, you know, I'd just come back. Interviewer: How did they know to call you? Hyle: I was in the reserve, so I was on a list and that's how the Army recalled me. And so I was…to the best of my knowledge, there might have been one other fella who was in the Air Force and I think it changed my life. It…I came back to a different job and a different opportunity and I think if I'd stayed under the other circumstances, it would have been more of a plodding opportunity, you know. I think that's right. Interviewer: You've already mentioned you attend reunions. Hyle: Yes, yes. Interviewer: [inaudible] What else [inaudible]? Hyle: Excuse me? Interviewer: Your boys are grown up. Hyle: Yes. Came…I married a convent-educated Catholic girl from the Midwest and we had four wonderful children and now have six. I lost her in November of nineteen ninety-nine. And a year or so later, my college sweetheart, that I had known for sixty years, lost her husband. And we met at a reunion, a college reunion, and we were married last December, a year ago. And it's been just wonderful. Interviewer: It was a blessing. Hyle: Yes. Interviewer: [inaudible] What did you think of your fellow officers and soldiers? Hyle: Well, I was very lucky. The…I was always with incredibly talented and good officers and given the fact that I'd gone back to college from the training at Fort Benning and then called back into an infantry outfit with three thousand of these same kind of people, it was…it was…these were wonderful companions, comrades. And even those that were already in the division from Oklahoma, a lot of them from the West, Midwest, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Montana. These were ranch…cattlemen, ranchers, telephone men and they were first rate. Just first rate. I don't…to my knowledge, we didn't have any cowards. I did hear that somebody shot himself to avoid…but I didn't know the person. Interviewer: During those circumstances, I don't guess there was much leave time. Hyle: No, they didn't. No. Interviewer: Did you have leave at all? Hyle: I got a two-week furlough just before we went overseas. [Tape 1, Side B] Hyle: And then when we came back we had, I think it was a thirty-day furlough. And then we were sent to Miami, one of these centers, rehab and so forth. And I was on orders to go to Fort Stone in California to be shipped over to fight in Japan. And luckily, August nineteen forty-five occurred, thanks to Mr. Truman's decision and there were hundreds of thousands of us getting ready to fight in…for…to take Japan. Interviewer: Did you have to go to California? Hyle: No. Again, the nature…the whole set of circumstances that sent me to Fort Mead, Maryland, where we were processing returning veterans. And it was in that that I…I was in that job from the end of…from VJ Day until November forty-five when I was discharged. Interviewer: That's quite a story. Hyle: Well, it's funny…somebody said it on the radio today, I wouldn't repeat it. Interviewer: Wouldn't want to live through it? Hyle: No. Interviewer: But you did. Hyle: But I'm glad that I did because it's given me a…gave me a whole dimension to my life that…it certainly reconnected me, if I needed reconnecting, to religion, to the importance of relationships. And we've, you know, we've…a number of us have kept in touch. So, on different days that were important to us, I'll get a phone call from somebody that's had a couple of drinks and he wants to talk about old times, you know. Interviewer: That's what it's all about, isn't it? Hyle: Yes, it is. Interviewer: Communication, old friends, new friends too. Moving on to the executive career . . . . Hyle: Well, I ended up, as I said, with Coca-Cola and then with…in the domestic business and then was fortunate enough to be sent over to the international part of the business. And I spent from nineteen seventy-eight until I retired in nineteen eighty-nine. And then I bought a consulting company and spent of most of my time in Europe. So from seventy-eight until I retired, retired, retired, retired in nineteen ninety-seven. And then I went back to work again in two thousand one to help a former business associate with a company that needed some work. But now I'm retired, retired, retired. Interviewer: Well, that's what they say. Hyle: Yeah. Interviewer: When you came back from overseas, did you know you were gonna do so much traveling in your civilian life? Hyle: No. But you know, I'd always wanted…you know, there's a story about developing a relationship with your captor. And so I found in my work with international, that I felt…and I traveled many places. I'd never been to Russia or Romania, Bulgaria, but I touched just about…a lot of places. But I always felt more comfortable in Germany. And I can't explain why, but I think it had to do with the fact that we shared a pretty bad time together and they didn't…I think that's it. And then I hear German a lot better than I speak it, so I could get along. But I like the way they work, like the way they are disciplined. Punctuality is a major issue with them. They get sick if they're late for something. And a number of our offices, a number of my clients were German or worked in Germany. Equally, I felt very comfortable with the Dutch, the Netherlanders. They are, to my limited experience, they are still the most appreciative of all the countries that we liberated or helped liberate. Nothing is too much for a Dutch person to…as far as…if you're an American. And they do wonderful things. There's one huge American cemetery in Bargrauten [phonetic] near Mostrecht [phonetic] in the province of Limburg, L-I-M-B-U-R-G, and I used to live nearby there when I was working over there and so, I got to know the guides who care for that beautiful cemetery. Currently, there's eight thousand American boys there. After the war, it was seventeen thousand, but the American government offered families who had sons there, offered to bring them home. So, nine thousand were taken out. But those, the Dutch are…ask and are assigned one grave. So that on Memorial Day, every single grave has flowers on it from some Dutch family. It's really quite, quite touching. I was there one cold again, cold day. Feel like it was February. And I had a lot of friends buried there. It was a weekend and I got to this beautiful cemetery [tape noise, inaudible] military cemetery. [tape noise, inaudible] the Latin crosses and the Stars of David and that's really all you see. And each of them have the name, the rank and the day he was killed. And I was standing beside the grave of one of my old friends and I felt a presence and it was a young man. I later learned his name was Philip Sneet, S-N-E-E-T. He had…he was…he asked, “Could I help you?” And I said, “No, I think I found the boy I wanted to say a prayer over”. And to make a long story short, he had…he was beside himself with joy. He'd just been told by letter by the Dutch government, in cooperation with the graves and registration people from the United States, that he had been given a grave to tend. And he had to ride a bicycle for five miles from his home to come over there as often as he did. Interviewer: [inaudible] Hyle: Yeah. Interviewer: [inaudible] feel that way about it. Hyle: Oh, and so appreciative. I got lost one afternoon coming into Amsterdam. I was coming from Germany. Got lost and I really was lost. The canals and you can just get lost. And I pulled in under a service station overhang and got a map out and I was standing there trying to find where I was so I could get where I wanted to be. And a Dutchman came up with these [inaudible] proper and they all speak English. They speak many languages. And he said, “Can I help you?” And I said, “Well yes, I need to get to the Amsterdam Hilton.” And he said, “Well, you're quite a ways from there.” He said, “[inaudible] in a general direction. Let me go with you.” So he got into my car and it took us a half an hour to find it. And when I finished, when we got there, I said, “Now where do you live?” And he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and he said, “Where I met you.” I said, “Well, I'm gonna take you back.” He said, “No, you'll get lost again.” Interviewer: [inaudible] Hyle: But he said, “No, there's a trolley just up the road that takes me right back.” But that was very special. That was his little bit to help his… Interviewer: [inaudible] Hyle: Yes. They do. Interviewer: [inaudible] Hyle: Well, I… Interviewer: I don't want to leave out anything. [inaudible] Hyle: No, I don't that…they were the…they were the…for another time, there's a whole series of stories having to do with getting out of prison camp. Back through the curtain of fire that you go through when you're captured. Interviewer: How did you do that? Hyle: Well, it was with some difficulty. The Russians literally overran the camp. And there were thousands of us that had been collected from the East and divided by nationalities, divided by rank. Things began to deteriorate. There was no food. The Germans were at least organized, you know. So, we just had to manage the best we could. We tried several ways of getting out. We'd all made some preparation for being liberated. I'd made a knapsack out of an old tent that had fallen down. A couple of buddies of mine with a Hundred and First Airborne and I took off in the direction of Dresden and that didn't work very well. Another day we stole a big [inaudible] horse from a German family, a German lady and her French refugee farmer. Got the horse back to the camp and we're loading him up and the Frenchman came over and he was quite agitated and, of course, made a good point, that was that this horse was the only way they were gonna live. So we gave his horse back. And there was story after story. But we finally…finally…a lot of those stories in there, but finally I was standing in the middle of the camp and some reporters came. They had crossed the Elbe and said that negotiations had broken down between the Americans and the Russians over repatriation of Russian civilians and Russian…certain Russian soldiers. And that the Russians had said, “We will keep all prisoners of war until you give us who we want.” So these reporters said, “There's a truck column coming fast to take as many of you as they can.” And I was standing right there and so the colonel in charge found out. Some Air Force colonel said, “Who knows where Treunbritzen [phonetic] is?” Well, Treunbritzen is T-R-E-U-N-B-R-I-T-Z-E-N, and I had just been there the day before--it's about two miles over through the fields--getting some eggs, taking some eggs. And I said, “Colonel, I've just been there.” Well, I shouldn't have…you weren't supposed to leave the camp because you could have been killed. He said, “Sergeant, I'll overlook the fact that you were out of camp, but lead us.” So I took off across the fields and managed to get in the first truck. And there were like ten trucks. They loaded them up and took off. And I later learned that hundreds, maybe thousands, were kept in that camp for another month while the Russians and the Americans, who were meeting in Halle, H-A-L-L-E, in Germany. And it was a major issue. Some of them were nuclear…these were people the Russians wanted back. And we weren't gonna give them back because they had asked for asylum. So it's, you know, there was a book written on that whole subject. I've forgotten the title, but it makes the claim, documented beautifully, that there were twenty-five thousand British, Canadian, American and others that the Russians had in gulags in Russia…in the United Soviet…in the USSR, that had been captured, some in the Korean War. There was a fictional book written, and they say it could have happened, about a group of American Air Force pilots that had been pressed into service to teach the Russians how to fly. Interviewer: [inaudible] I shouldn't say that, should I. Hyle: Well, there's been a lot of conversation about it. I wish I…I can't remember the name of the book. But it's…it lays the claim and then documents it. Supposedly some of our senior people knew about it. But, other negotiations were more serious at that point. Don't know how all that ended, but I do know that I got on that first truck because I overheard this conversation that negotiations had broken down. And so it pays to be up front. Interviewer: Pays to be alert, too, doesn't it. Hyle: Yeah, it does. It does. It does. Interviewer: Well, [inaudible]. Hyle: That's right. Interviewer: Thank you so much. Hyle: Thank you, Margaret. It was a…very seldom I have an opportunity to just talk without having to listen too. Well, thank you. Interviewer: I wanted to make sure I didn't omit anything. But as you said, there were so many details and facets. Hyle: Yes. Interviewer: [inaudible] Hyle: You know, it's a wonderful thing. I'm trying to think what…but in the last year and a half, I've got some insignia on my car. I've had at least three, maybe four people come up to me in parking lots and say, “Thank you”. One time, it was just out here in Sandy Springs and this man was standing by my car, midday. Just standing there, leaning on my car. And I wondered why. And as I came up, he said, “Is this your car?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, were you in the Eighty-fourth Division?” As I said, “Yes.” He said, “I lost a brother with the Forty-fifth.” And he said, “I just want to say thank you.” He walked away. Very special. Interviewer: Yes. Hyle: And so, I do it too. I was in the airport this last little while with some of the boys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. And there was applause. Interviewer: People are becoming aware now more so than they were earlier. Hyle: Yes. Interviewer: Well, thank you again.
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Extent:: 1:03:20
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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