Commentary; Posted: 7/3/02

Why I cry on the Fourth of July

Franklin Maki
Guest Columnist

During World War II, at age 18 and 19, I served as a medical laboratory technician and orderly with the 200-bed 119th Evacuation Hospital.

We were in Europe with the Ninth Army. We were there at the end of the Battle of the Bulge, then Rhineland and Central Europe. We had 32 doctors, 40 nurses, a chaplain and 120 enlisted men. We also had 15 ambulances with drivers and assistants attached to our company.

We could accept about 100 new wounded everyday we were in the combat zone. We saved almost all who made it to the hospital, but not all. When we needed to move, we could take down the entire hospital and have it loaded on 52 trucks in three hours.

At one time we were near the Rhine River as thousands of artillery and tanks fired over us all night to the other side. Eleven thousand flights of bombers flew over us the next day, dropped their bombs, were shot down or returned.

The next morning paratroopers dropped into the flak put up by the Germans. The Navy also moved troops over the river with landing craft.

We knew our hospital would be full, as it was much of the time. We often saw or heard explosions, flak, as well as smoke from burning buildings. We smell the decaying and burning flesh of people and animals.

My buddy and I carried many of the dead, first to a morgue tent or bomb shelter, and then onto six-by-six trucks to graveyards further back. One amputated arm fell on the ground and I lifted it back on the stretcher.

I remember trying to get a blood sample from a soldier who had lost both legs, one arm at the shoulder and the other arm between the wrist and the elbow.

I remember all the German prisoners of war, German civilians and refugees from all over that we treated, as well as the survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (where Anne Frank died). We fed the survivors one teaspoonful of soup every 20 minutes to help them start eating again.

I remember sharing my meals with German civilians and one German soldier who had been captured and released. People lined up outside the roped-off area just hoping to get something to eat. I remember all the people on the roads and in the refugee camps.

I still have a terrible time watching fireworks because they bring back memories of the real thing. I hear comments such as, ìLook how pretty!î or ìThat was a great fireworks display, so colorful!î

I think of the five boyhood neighbors killed in the war, cousins to each other.

One was killed as a fighter pilot in the Pacific. Four were in the infantry.

A sniper killed one on Iwo Jima in the last week of the war. One died in Germany, and two brothers died in Normandy.

They were all good young men who gave their lives in the service of their country.

That is why I cry on the Fourth of July.

Franklin Maki lives in Forest Lake. He is a retired educator who worked in public education for 34 years. He retired from ISD 831 in 1987.

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