Point of View
The Internet helps bring WWII closure
By Carl Heintze
I've bored people for years with stories of World War II. I'm sorry. Here's one more. Really, however, it is not so much a story of World War II as it is of the Internet, that new, vast and mysterious way of communicating with anyone anywhere in the world.
But it also does involve World War II, the reconciliation of enemies and the passage of time.
It all started when one day I was searching the Internet for signs of my old World War II outfit, the 9th Infantry Division. The 9th Infantry Division, which also served in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, has a website. It really is the website of the 9th Infantry Division Association, open to former members of the division, no matter where they served.
One of the parts of the website is a place where one may leave a message as to service. So I did.
Not long afterward I got an email message from Albert Trostoft, who lives in the town of Merode, Germany. Merode is a small city on the Rhine plain, west of Cologne. During World War II the 9th Infantry Division attacked and captured Merode and several other nearby cities, as well: Schlich, Jungersdorf and Langerwehe.
Albert Trostoft is a member of an historical society which observes the dates of these battles--they took place at the end of 1944.
He was anxious to make contact with me because he has not made much contact with American veterans of the battle. Nevertheless, each year some veterans, both German and American, get together to remember what took place in 1944, and to hope for a lasting peace between the United States and Germany.
Albert kindly copied and sent me half a dozen pictures of Merode, Schlich and Jungersdorf, both contemporary photographs and those taken during the fighting.
He then sent them to me as email.
Since then, at Albert's request, I have racked my brain for memories of the fighting and of 1944. I'm afraid my memory is getting hazy--it was, after all, over half a century ago, but I do remember a few things.
The villages are on the edge of the Rhine plain, just after the trees of the Huertgen and associated forests end, and they were a welcome sight to us, even though they were badly damaged by artillery fire. They meant that we were finally free of the prison of trees.
The German inhabitants of the towns were all gone by the time we got there. They had been evacuated by German authorities eastward to get them out of the battle front. It was just as well. Many of the buildings were built of fachwerk, or, as it is sometimes called, clay and wattles.
Branches of trees are inserted between wooden framing and stuffed with mud. The mud is then plastered over and painted. It's an ancient method of construction and is excellent insulation until a shell lands nearby.
Then the walls, the clay and wattles, spill out into the street and make a muddy mess in the rain. Schlich, Merode and Jungersdorf all suffered this kind of damage and were, by the time we reached them, a mess.
Merode also is the home of a castle. In 1944, it was battered by artillery fire. Restored after the war, it was a show place until a few years ago when, so Albert tells me, it was badly damaged by a fire.
There are, in fact, several castles nearby, all of which were damaged in the war and all of which have since been rebuilt. So have the rest of the villages. They now look prosperous and peaceful, lying as they do on the flat plain that leads to the west bank of the Rhine.
I last saw them in 1969 on a trip through Germany with my family, but I do not recognize them very clearly from the pictures Albert has sent me.
Still, I appreciate the closure which the pictures and his messages bring me. It is somehow comforting to know that the hell which war wreaked on Schlich, Jungersdorf, Merode and other towns near Cologne has been repaired and that war is only a fading memory to those who live there.
I don't know that I shall ever go back to see them again. I'm not sure I need to go back to see them again now that I have heard from Albert.
But I am immensely grateful that one German and one American have managed to reach across half a century to find something about which to communicate. Perhaps it proves that even war can be overcome.
Certainly that message would be one worth spreading across the entire Internet.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
