Mission at Nuremberg

by Tim Townsend

  Safe or not, the chaplain clearly enjoyed and encouraged the attention. After Hank had downed a few beers, they walked over to an officers’ and nurses’ dance where Hank had a couple more drinks. Gerecke sat and watched as his Ninety-Eighth friends danced. Knowing his father disapproved of dancing, Hank just sat next to him and drank another beer.

  “Son, there are a lot of pretty nurses in this room,” the chaplain said. “Why don’t you go ask one of them to dance?” Hank was stunned, but he decided to take his father’s advice. “By then I couldn’t stand up to get out of my damn chair,” Hank said later. “And Dad knew it. He just sat there laughing.”

  Hank’s visits alleviated some of Gerecke’s anxiety, but the grim work of the Ninety-Eighth was all-consuming. He was sitting with nearly a hundred patients a day, and he continued to try and convince his colleagues that their spiritual health was as important as their physical nourishment, especially in the turbulent atmosphere and individual stresses of life in a transit hospital.

  He also knew that matters of life and death took priority, and that’s where he spent most of his time. The medical staff often asked for his help. A soldier was brought in, unconscious and severely wounded, and the doctors asked Gerecke to pray for the man. For three hours he stood silently behind the surgeons as they operated, and prayed. When Gerecke visited the soldier as he was recuperating, he told Gerecke that he “wasn’t ready” to die.

  Another time, Gerecke was called to the side of a dying man. He joined a raft of doctors at the soldier’s bed. As Gerecke bent over him, the man opened his eyes and asked, “Chaplain, am I going to die?” For a moment, Gerecke froze. The doctors and nurses looked at him expectantly, as Gerecke prayed for an answer. A nurse was about to fill the void, but a doctor stopped her. “God’s children never die,” Gerecke finally said. As the medical staff drifted away from the man’s bed, Gerecke told the twenty-year-old that “Heaven’s gate is opened by trusting Jesus, who died for you.” He asked the soldier to repeat after him, and the soldier did: “Jesus, I trust Thee. Keep me safe for heaven.” Gerecke never saw him again.

  In the fall, the hospital expanded again as more patients continued to flow through its doors. The unit built an intricate drainage system to eliminate problems with standing water around the hospital grounds, another mess for patients, and a laundry facility with twelve fifteen-gallon tubs to accommodate 350 men per hour. The Red Cross expanded its craft room with tools and materials so patients with battle fatigue could do wood- and metalworking. Sullivan built a theater with a permanent stage, dressing rooms, and seating for 350.

  Gerecke used all this activity to his advantage. “I am fortunate in having the friendship of the entire personnel,” he wrote. “Many are reached in Mess Halls, Day Room, and Officer’s Meetings.”

  Just as Gerecke had come around to appreciate the strictures and discipline of army life, the institution was changing him in different ways. He had witnessed the bonding that occurs under intense physical and psychological stress of a wartime hospital, and that in turn led to an acknowledgment that God couldn’t possibly hold it against these doctors and nurses for blowing off steam through dancing and drinking a bit. He also knew, of course, that these were occasions for him to connect with his colleagues—opportunities for Gerecke’s true goal: evangelization. And so, to the dances, USO shows, and basketball games he went.

  The unit put on two patient dances in the fall in the new patient mess hall, with music provided by the Ninety-Eighth General Hospital Orchestra, and invited young ladies from local British welfare organizations to attend. The orchestra also played three music variety shows in the new theater, two enlisted dances, and two officers/nurses dances. The theater hosted three USO shows, a special service show, and a British show. The unit basketball team was playing a weekly schedule of four games in two leagues formed among nearby units.

  Gerecke continued to encourage the Jewish members of the unit to hold services together, and in the absence of a Jewish chaplain or available local rabbi, a Jewish officer led the Friday evening services for about twenty-five staff members. In November, Gerecke arranged for thirty-three of his Jewish colleagues to attend Yom Kippur services at a local synagogue.

  Gerecke held Thanksgiving services in November, and knowing how Christmas cheer would affect morale, he began planning for December. He formed caroling, flower, and decoration committees. “Our nurses are especially interested in this work,” he wrote. “Friendly neighbors will provide Christmas trees.”

  The Allies had moved one thousand German POWs to a stockade near Hermitage, and Sullivan began using detachments of them for labor around the hospital. The staff laid out a baseball diamond with the help of the POWs. Dozens of prisoners helped with construction, sanitary projects, painting buildings, general maintenance, and kitchen patrol duties. They helped build three thousand feet of sidewalks among the buildings and a garbage incinerator. Because of Gerecke’s knowledge of German, Sullivan asked him to help supervise the prisoners. “They have a chaplain, but I must watch him,” Gerecke wrote. “Especially his sermon material concerning anything he might say against our government.”

  But he was also doing his best to convert the German POWs he encountered at the stockade. In October 1944, Gerecke sent a Western Union telegram to Paul Kretzmann, Concordia Seminary’s librarian in St. Louis, who had written a recommendation for Gerecke to get into the Chaplain Corps.

  “PLEASE RUSH GERMAN LITERATURE DEVOTIONALS CHRISTMAS CARD HYMN BOOKLETS FOR LARGE PRISON CAMP IN NEIGHBORHOOD,” Gerecke wrote.

  His country actually asked him to do much more. Two members of the Office of Strategic Services, the U.S. intelligence agency during World War II that preceded the CIA, came from London to visit the Ninety-Eighth. Gerecke later said they asked him to use his German to extract information from the POWs during confession. Gerecke had, indeed, begun to help the German chaplain with his pastoral duties among the prisoners, but he told the OSS men that he couldn’t violate the privacy of the confessional, even in the service of national security.

  At an army general hospital, patients were given “definitive treatment” then returned to duty if their units were in Britain or sent to replacement depots for reassignment. If patients needed prolonged treatment—defined as more than 120 days—the army sent them back to the United States. Patients who needed specialized treatment but could return to duty within three months were sent to other hospitals in England designated for whatever special treatment they needed.

  At the end of November, the army returned the Ninety-Eighth from the status of a transit hospital to that of a general hospital and the patient flow from the two airfields slowed considerably. In October and November, when the Ninety-Eighth was taking wounded directly from the battlefields, it admitted 7,290 patients. In December, after the army had returned the Ninety-Eighth to the status of “general,” it saw only 350 patients from the Continent. But it treated 533 patients based in the United Kingdom and gave another 6,280 outpatient care.

  The pace change mattered for Gerecke only in the kind of work he was doing. Less time in the emergency and operating rooms meant doctors and nurses had more time for church. December is the busy season for anyone in the Christianity business anyway, and Gerecke saw the biggest chapel attendance spike in his army career with nearly one thousand coming to one or more of his thirteen Sunday services over the month. “We feel highly gratified at the response to our invitations to Christmas Services,” Gerecke wrote. “The days are too short for two Chaplains to meet all spiritual opportunities in our large hospital. We pray for Guidance.”

  Sullivan noticed the chaplain’s efforts during December, and in January, he wrote a note of commendation. Chaplain Gerecke, Sullivan wrote:

  . . . is to be commended upon the superior manner in which he has performed his duties during the year 1944. In the early months of the year, before the unit arrived in the United Kingdom, he was the only chaplain assigned, and by his devotion to duty, his broad tole
rance, his concern for the spiritual needs of the entire unit regardless of creed, he established himself firmly as the counselor and guide of officer and enlisted personnel. The same paternal characteristics were shown to patients. In the most difficult times, as a transit hospital, when large numbers of patients arrived on short notice and were evacuated within 12 to 24 hours, no man departed without the ministration and prayers of the chaplain. This officer exemplifies the best traditions of the Corps of Chaplains in the Ministry.

  The relatively ponderous pace of patient loads didn’t last long. During the winter, especially in January and February 1945, the hospital received thousands of soldiers from the front lines suffering the effects of the severe cold and arduous battles on the Continent. Trench foot, frostbite, and battle fatigue were the most common conditions.

  The hospital received an average of about eleven hundred patients a week, but that number swelled to treat as many as fourteen hundred during heavy battle activity. As if there wasn’t enough to keep the unit busy, on January 26 a fire destroyed the bar in the enlisted men’s dayroom, forcing hundreds of thirsty off-duty soldiers into a cramped Special Services Building for beer.

  Gerecke’s ward visits increased again after the New Year, and he began taking cigarettes with him on his rounds to offer to the wounded, along with New Testaments and devotional booklets. One month he distributed “1,000 Scripture Calendar cards; 200 New Testaments; 1,000 Easter Crosses; 300 Plastic Crosses; 500 Devotional Tracts and 250 Devotional Booklets.” Gerecke worked alongside twelve members of the British Women’s Volunteer Services who visited patients four afternoons a week to sew and mend their clothing. The ladies also handed out matches—helpful for those who’d acquired a few cigarettes from Gerecke.

  The cold was a killer for chapel attendance, and Gerecke again complained about its distance from the hospital’s main action. “Suggest the English place Chapels in Hospital Areas thereby serving the spiritual needs of all ambulatory patients,” he wrote. “The distance between Chapel and Hospital Area is too great, especially in bad weather.”

  Gerecke still had no doubt—despite all the commotion and life-and-death situations and new friendships and adventure of the past year—about the most important part of his job. On February 21, he baptized twenty-three-year-old Samuel K. Cressman from Lansing, Michigan, in the chapel. Second Lieutenant Nurse Nathalie LaCrouts was the witness. “Opportunities for individual soul-winning are tremendous,” he wrote. “There’s not enough time.”

  By now Geist was directing a chapel choir and a glee club. A member of the Ninety-Eighth, Captain Friedland, led Jewish services on Friday nights at six, and Gerecke convinced Sullivan to allow an army transport to shuttle a local rabbi, Rabbi Ginsberg, to the hospital twice a week to minister to Jewish patients. “Our Commanding Officer never hesitates to give every available help to his Chaplains,” Gerecke wrote. “Our wounded men are deeply grateful.”

  In an efficiency report for Gerecke, written on March 1, Sullivan gave the chaplain the highest marks possible on categories like “attention to duty,” “cooperation,” and “judgment and common sense.” His lowest marks, perhaps predictably for a somewhat plump fifty-one-year-old, were for “force” and “physical activity and endurance.”

  “A cheerful, loyal, devout officer,” Sullivan wrote in the report, “intensely concerned in the spiritual welfare and morale of all members of the unit, tolerant and kindly to all, not sparing himself in the performance of duty. He has the affection as well as respect of all.”

  Sullivan’s push for morale-boosting distraction expanded during the spring. The intrahospital softball league competition was fierce. The unit’s clinicians, officers, patient detachment, administration, and mess each fielded a team. A Ninety-Eighth baseball team (with uniforms) formed to compete against nearby hospitals and other installations, playing six home games in March and April.

  Sullivan chartered a boat for enlisted personnel to float from Oxford, down the Thames twenty miles and back. Staff and patients could play golf, tennis, and basketball, and the hospital loaned out fifteen bicycles for patients to explore the surrounding countryside. Anyone who had a camera could take his film to the hospital photo lab, where pictures could be developed and printed at cost.

  Three days after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, Gerecke organized memorial services. “It was the desire of our Commanding Officer that ambulatory patients and members of the unit attend the Service of their choice,” Gerecke wrote. That month, he also visited an American cemetery in Cambridge to take part in a mass burial. “An unforgettable experience,” he wrote. “I feel more qualified to write better condolence letters.”

  As Allied forces began breaking through German defenses in May, the Ninety-Eighth had a new patient class: American soldiers flown in from newly liberated German POW camps. The unit set up delousing stations, and doctors studied up on the treatment of severe malnutrition. The hospital saw more cases of trench foot and frostbite suffered by men on forced marches. As the Allies pushed farther into German-occupied zones, more former captives were sent to the hospital, and the Ninety-Eighth was soon packed to capacity again.

  In mid-April, Sullivan received orders that as of May 1, those patients whom doctors determined could not be returned to duty within sixty days were to be sent back to the United States. It was a signal that the war was coming to a close. And indeed, within a week, Hitler’s successor, Admiral Karl Doenitz, ordered General Alfred Jodl to surrender to General Dwight Eisenhower.

  On VE day, Hank was on the Champs-Élysées, waving with thousands of others as General Charles de Gaulle paraded into Paris. A few days later, Hank met his father in London and they spent a week together. “My son could have gone anywhere he wanted on his leave, but he chose to come spend it with his father,” he told his friends in the Ninety-Eighth. “Isn’t that something?” In his May report, Gerecke wrote, “We thank God for Victory in Europe. May victory come to our men in the Pacific area soon.”

  After VE Day, May 8, 1945, the flow of patients at the Ninety-Eighth slowed to a trickle, and rumors began to circulate that its staff would be going home. Other rumors had the unit packing up and moving to the Pacific to help in the final push against the Japanese. The unit spent much of its time breaking down the hospital they’d built and sending any remaining patients to other hospitals. Orders eventually came that key doctors—the chief of surgical services, the chief of X-ray services, the heads of the neuropsychiatric, anesthetic, and gastrointestinal divisions—had been reassigned, along with some officers and enlisted men, “throwing the smoke grenade of rumor and conjecture into our midst,” Sullivan wrote.

  The Ninety-Eighth stopped admitting patients on May 22, and Sullivan told the staff to prepare for another ocean voyage. Finally, the commander received instructions to report to Southampton, where the Ninety-Eighth boarded the MS Dunnottar Castle, a troop ship named for a medieval Scottish fortress, and on June 15 crossed the English Channel to Le Havre.

  Sullivan was clearly proud of his unit’s success. “A newly formed and trained organization had established itself in England to perform its primary mission,” he wrote. “Every type of operation which could possibly confront a fixed hospital left the unit with a wealth of experience, a pride of achievement and confidence in any future task.” It was that achievement that kept most of the Ninety-Eighth in Europe. Instead of being sent home, Sullivan and his team would be sent to resurrect a battered hospital in the middle of Munich—Bavaria’s capital, the newly crushed heart of Nazism.

  THE NINETY-EIGHTH LANDED IN France on June 18, 1945, and after ten days at Camp Pall Mall near Le Havre, Sullivan was ordered to take his unit to Eagle Main, an Allied staging area in Verdun where Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Omar Bradley had planned the final stages of the war just before Christmas. On July 2, the unit arrived in Verdun, about eighty miles from Nancy, France, where Hank was stationed. Gerecke sent a message to his son that the Ninety-Eighth wa
s just up the Meuse River, but Hank was not on post. By the time Hank got the message and rushed to Verdun, the Ninety-Eighth had departed for Munich.

  By now, Gerecke knew how to minister to a large military group, and he wasn’t impressed with what he’d seen in Le Havre and Verdun. He attended a conference with eighty-five other chaplains in Reims. “There should be a Post Chaplain at Eagle-Main to coordinate the Lord’s work,” he wrote in his monthly report. “If the Chaplain at Etretat is in charge of Pall Mall, he should arrange for organ and hymnals. I pray God the Chaplains do not let down on our ‘Fathers business’ since VE Day. Seems to me our fighting men and women need special attention right now.”

  The majority of the Ninety-Eighth personnel arrived in Munich on Sunday, July 15, after an arduous three-day train journey aggravated by a number of detours. Almost before unloading their bags, Gerecke and Father Walsh were leading Sunday services in the hospital chapels. “Both chaplains had been with the unit in England,” Sullivan wrote. “Both were devoted to their duties, kindly, tolerant.”

  An advance party that included Sullivan arrived at the former Municipal Hospital of Munich, known as Schwabinger Krankenhaus, to find “enormous problems” facing the Ninety-Eighth’s mission. Schwabing, named for the district of Munich where it sat, had been a two-thousand-bed building before it was pummeled by Allied bombers, suffering seventeen direct hits, including several incendiary bombs.

  The hospital consisted of seven large buildings and several smaller buildings—all connected by corridors, basements, and sub-basements. Each building had three floors and each floor seventy-five beds. But when Sullivan arrived, he found Schwabing barely usable, with half its windows blown out, corridors between wards crushed, roofs open to the sky, and equipment strewn throughout the building “from attics to basements.” Two bombs had destroyed the operating room, physiotherapy clinic, and X-ray clinic. The dental clinic had been reduced to a single chair.