Hospital on Wheels Book Excerpts_( Three Excerpts)_____________________________
Hospital on Wheels Excerpt One:
Excerpted from Hospital on Wheels-World War II MASH, by Leo E. Ours, Jr.,
to be published in September 2007 Dog Ear Publishing, © 2007 by Leo E. Ours, Jr.
First American Edition. All premium and marketing inquiries should be sent to Dog Ear
Publishing 4010 West 86th Street, Suite H, Indianapolis, IN 46268 or call 1-866-823-9613
Chapter One-Huntington 1942
IT WAS A WARM APRIL evening on a Friday in 1942. The town’s inhabitants were leaving
work and making plans for the weekend. A big band concert was scheduled that evening
featuring Tommy Dorsey, known as the, The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing and the
Artie Shaw string section. Down at the Orpheum Theater, The Pride of the Yankees
was showing, staring Gary Cooper. A welterweight boxing match was scheduled at WCMI
radio hall that evening. The best ice cream in town could be located at the Guyan
Creamery and Grill—a favorite place to go on a hot summer evening in Huntington.
Huntington was a beautiful small town nestled along the picturesque Ohio River,
with brick streets, lined maple, oak and elm trees. The local college located in
the center of town was named after John Marshall, fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. It was the town’s epicenter. The college’s beautifully landscaped grounds
were complete with the same flora that blessed the town, interspersed with ivy-covered
brick halls of learning and names like “Old Main,” Morrow Library or Shawkey Student
Union.
The city was pre-planned by train magnate Collis P. Huntington, who developed the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. He had the city laid out on the railroads southern
terminus, paying particular attention to its esthetic needs as well as its future
growth and transportation requirements. The town was set apart by well laid out
streets, crisscrossed with wide avenues and a central park that ran the length of
the city.
The park abounded with picnic areas, tennis courts, rose and aqua gardens that truly
presented an idyllic picture. The rose gardens were bursting with spring blooms.
There were so many in all the gardens that if you walked by, you would believe you
had just opened a bottle of expensive French perfume. Their combined fragrance permeated
the air along the gravel paths and sidewalks that provided a footpath through the
park. The aqua gardens were adorned with terraces and reflective pools. Each slowly
spilled their crystal clear contents into the next iridescent pond below. Those
sweet fragrances, coupled with the soft splashing and tinkling sounds of the gentle
falling water created a magical place. If you closed your eyes for a moment, you
could almost see the town in a Norman Rockwell illustration on the cover of Post
Magazine.
Hospital on Wheels Excerpt Two:
Interview with an Ampfing Concentration Camp Survivor
By Leo E. Ours, Jr.
Excerpted from Hospital on Wheels-World War II MASH, by Leo E. Ours, Jr., to be
published in September 2007 Dog Ear Publishing, © 2007 by Leo E. Ours, Jr. First
American Edition. All premium and marketing inquiries should be sent to Dog Ear
Publishing 4010 West 86th Street, Suite H, Indianapolis, IN 46268 or call 1-866-823-9613
Eddie Grynbaum an Auschwitz, Dacahau and Ampfing-Waldlager concentration camp survivor
that spent his teen age years surviving the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps.
He witnessed the torture and humiliation and the death of his father and uncle.
He saw as many as 500 a day die in the Dachau as they succumbed to the brutality
inflicted upon the Jews during World War II. He participated in the Gross-Rosen
Death March where thousands were shot to death as they faltered and fell unable
to walk any further.1
Eddie was born in 1923 in Lodz the second largest city in Poland and one of the
largest Jewish centers at the outbreak of the war. It was an industrial town that
had several Jewish owned textile mills and cultural amenities developed by the Jewish
society. It was the birthplace of the great pianist Artur Rubinstein.2
Germany invaded in 1939 and captured the city on September 8th of the same year
establishing a Ghetto eventually populating it with over 350,000 area Jews. Eddie
spent the next six years of his life in the Ghetto with his family that consisted
of his father, Abraham, his mother, Regina, his sister, Ester and his uncle, Srulik
Muller. They operated a small sweet shop that sold imported fruit and confections
in the same building the housed the “Scala Theater” that was founded in 1912. The
Scala was the largest theater in Lodz and his family’s business prospered. His uncle
Srulik was a leather craftsman that made saddles and other related leather goods.
In 1944 Himmler ordered the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto and the population deported
to Auschwitz. The German’s then began systematically liquidating the Jews in the
Ghetto and shipping them to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other concentration camps. One
morning the Germans came to the Grynbaum house to remove his family from the Ghetto
but accidentally overlooked Eddie since he had blond hair and blue eyes and in his
words “I did not look like a Jew”.
Eddie and his family were forced to walk to the Train Station where they were placed
in a cattle car and sent 204 miles by rail to Auschwitz. The train station was a
modest black wooden hut and small strip of concrete platform - through which passed
more than 150,000 Jews, bound for their deaths in Chelmo and Auschwitz. 3
Meticulously the German wrote in legible black ink, the surname,
and forename, and address, date of birth, marital status and profession of each
Jew about to enter the cattle car at the Lodz train station.4
They were packed into the cars like sardines, without any seats, windows or toilet
facilities. When they arrived at the camp the Germans separated the men from the
women and sent them to separate compounds. This would the last time his mother and
sister would see his father and uncle Spulik who did not survive the war. Eddie’s
extended family consisted of 350 men, women and children. From grandparents to uncles
and aunts all of them except for Eddie, his mother and sister were killed by the
Germans during the war.
Jews from the Lodz ghetto are loaded onto freight trains for deportation to the
extermination camps. Lodz, Poland, between 1942 and 1944.
National Museum of American
Jewish History, Philadelphia Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Museums, Holocaust
Encyclopedia, www.ushmnn.org, German Railways and the Holocaust
Acknowledgement:
This story was made possible through the assistance of Lona O’Connor
a Palm Beach Post Staff Writer who provided the name and address of Eddie Grynabaum.
Her Tuesday, April 26, 2005 articles and web site titled; “The Liberation, 1945,
Local Survivors Remember the Holocaust’s Final Days” tell the stories of local Palm
Beach holocaust survivors and their liberators. Many of the facts presented in her
story were retold by Eddie to me and were also included in this story.
Not all truth leads to reconciliation in Poland, http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,1941651,00.html
Hospital on Wheels: Excerpt Three
CHAPTER SIX
___________________
D-DAY
Figure 1, Landing at Utah Beach June 6, 1944.
ON JUNE 6, 1944 over 5000 ships and landing craft sailed to the Normandy coast and
put ashore over 326,000 military personnel. They went ashore at beaches called Utah,
Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The Germans opposed the Allies with 50 divisions led
by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel whose spectacular victories as commander of the Afrika
Korps earned the name of the “Desert Fox” in North Africa.
The Allies had previously parachuted 23,000 paratroopers behind the beach defensives.
They were to capture key bridges and crossroads to help move the ground forces off
the beaches and into inland defensive positions. By July 2nd 1944 the Allies had
put more than 929,000 men ashore in Normandy. The stories of valor and courage abound
and it was one of the finest days for America’s fighting men. Between the 10th and
23rd of June the 31st and 68th Medical Groups and their attached units disembarked
on Utah beach. The 68th supported the V and XIX Corps of the First Army.
18-Jun-1944, HQ Section plus 2 officers & 9 enlisted men attached from 1st and
2nd Platoon, Marshalling Area Camp #C-14, Winchester, England.
On the 18th and 19th of June, 1944 the company was sent to the marshalling area
camp number C-14 in Winchester, England to await transportation to the Southampton
port of embarkation for France. The truck drivers made the trucks ready for the
trip to Normandy by making the engine watertight. They placed air hoses on the air
intake and exhaust pipes, ran them up the side of the cab and tied them off. This
would get them above the water level when they drove the equipment off the landing
craft and up on the beach. They placed putty around the spark plugs and distributors
to prevent water shorting out the electrical system.
On June 20, they were placed on trucks and moved to the docks at Southampton. The
city was completely devastated by the German’s daily bombing and buzz bombs attacks.
This was an important industrial site where they manufactured the Supermarine Spitfire
fighter aircraft. They saw burnt out buildings and piles of rubble. They would see
similar sights when they reached Belgium and even worse in Germany.
The company was unloaded in an abandoned warehouse complex adjacent to the docks.
They were told to bed down on the concrete floor because they wouldn’t be leaving
for several hours. The floor was hard and cold, the most uncomfortable sleeping
arrangement they had endured to date.
20-Jun-1944, HQ Section plus 2 officers & 9 enlisted men attached from 1st and
2nd Platoon boarded the ship SS Eugene E. O'Lennell.
Figure 2, Crossed rifles in the sand, Normandy 1944.
On June 23rd, the remainder of the company boarded the ship ISI Mecklenburg to cross
the channel. Several of the men located some ragged tarpaper hanging from the walls
of the warehouse. It seemed that others before them had to endure the same fate
and had found the same insulating material.
They could see where it had been torn off in irregular pieces on the lower portions
of the walls. They had to support the lighter men to reach higher up the wall to
get to what was left. They used the paper by placing it under bedrolls and duffel
bags. It didn’t help much but was better than the bare concrete floor. In the morning,
the sergeants roused them but they were already in various stages of being either
half awake or half asleep. The order to get ready to move out was welcomed but their
aching bones were not amused. They marched two by two out of the warehouse complex
to see the SS Eugene E. O'Lennell waiting with gangplank lowered
As they boarded with their duffel bags, random thoughts ran through Leo’s head.
He thought this is it. There’s no turning back now. Oh, my God, we are actually
going to Normandy and the war. Leo’s thoughts were of home and his family. He tried
to remember every feature of Glenna’s face and the face of his newborn son. He was
horrified that if something would happen to him that they would suffer. Then the
bark of the sergeant brought him back to the present as he moved up the gangway.
Leo was more concerned about not impeding the loading of the Company onto the ship
and quickened his step.
1 Eddie Grynbaum Interview, February 6, 2007
2 Polish Jews in World War II, www.cyberroad.com/poland/jews_ww2.html
3 Not all truth leads to reconciliation in Poland, http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,1941651,00.html
4 Not all truth leads to reconciliation in Poland, http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,1941651,00.html