Oral History Program Robert Stegen Interviewed By Steven F. Crane 11 March 2013 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Robert Stegen Interviewed by Steven F. Crane 11 March 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection includes interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Stegen, Robert, an oral history by Steven F. Crane, 11 March 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Robert Stegen March 11, 2013 1 Abstract: Robert Stegen participated in an oral history interview with Steve Crane of the Ogden Rotary Club on March 11, 2013 to discuss his experiences as a veteran of World War II. Robert was drafted in 1943 and served until 1946 as a 1st Lieutenant. He is a Purple Heart recipient and also earned the Bronze Star for valor in combat. Following his military service, Robert began his career at the Army Defense Depot in Ogden, Utah and retired as a chief civilian of that facility in 1980 with 37 years of service. SC This is the first session of the 2013 Ogden Rotary Club and Weber State University Veteran’s history Project held March 11, 2013 at the George E. Whalen Ogden Veteran’s Home. I’m Steve Crane with the Ogden Rotary Club and I will be conducting this interview. Also present are Bob Harris from the Ogden Rotary Club, Stacie Gallagher from Weber State University and my wife, Donna Crane. Our guest at this session is Robert Stegen. This session is to talk about your service opportunity. We understand that your birthday is July 26, 1924, which makes you 88 years old. Your branch of service was the Army and you served from 1943 to 1946. Your highest rank was 1st Lieutenant and your position was a war bride escort. RS: It was a program to get back and process through all of the war brides whose husbands were soldiers and had already left for the states. It included medical examinations, counseling, and all the different language interpretation we could have and packing up everything for those that qualified for shipment. SC: Some of the awards you received were the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. There is a little “2” by the Bronze Star, what does that mean? 2 RS: That’s a “V” for “Valor”. SC: We’d like to start talking a little bit about your service and I’d like to ask you how you came to be in the service? RS: I graduated from Ogden High School in 1942, right after Pearl Harbor. We were not looking for employment then, we had some assured. I went in the Army with the first 18-year-old draft on May 8, 1943. SC: Where did you receive your training? RS: I went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, which was the center for the armory corp. It was the tank corps of the U.S. Army. There, I was trained as a tank gunner and tank driver for a big Sherman three-quarter ton tank. Later, through events, I ended up in the infantry as a replacement officer in Europe. SC: What major campaigns were you involved in? RS: Central Europe and the Rhinelands. That’s two of them. That was after the Battle of the Bulge. Fortunately, I missed the Bulge. My infantry division and my company did not miss the Bulge and they caught heck there. I was fortunate and came up as a replacement officer and I missed the Bulge. SC: Who was your leading general? RS: General Bradley. From the top it was Eisenhower and coming up on the pecking order, it was General Simpson with the 9th U.S. Army and we were under his majesty Montgomery, heir to the British crown. He was not liked by the typical American G.I. SC: During these campaigns, did you see combat? 3 RS: Yes. I was wounded at Dortman, Germany in the upper industrial part of Germany where the crop iron works and there was a big concentration of industry and chemistry. Of course, it was just bombed and we gave it heck trying to put it out of operation. I got pretty heavily involved in that for my time. SC: Were you shot? RS: I was wounded. I was shot by a 20 millimeter cannon in the left leg and it tore the meat all the way up from behind my knee. I was in the hospital for a little over two months for that. SC: What hospital did they send you to? RS: They sent me first to the Army General Hospital 221st, which was located in Reims, France. It was a comparatively new hospital over there. I developed gangrene in my left leg and it was bad news. They’d push it and it would shoot puss all over the bedding and everything else. I had some pain with that, it was miserable. The leader of the hospital came to tell me, “Lieutenant, I’m going to transfer you to the 36th General Hospital. They’ve been over here since North Africa and have had a lot of experience. Unfortunately, in the United States, we don’t treat many gunshot wounds. We’re a new hospital. We’re good, but we’re going to send you where there’s more experience.” That got me to Dijon and I was in Dijon at the 36th General Hospital when the Germans surrendered. SC: What was your experience like during close combat? How did you feel? RS: I am alive today because I was kind to a German soldier. SC: Can you tell us about that? 4 RS: We had a machine gun nest. There were four Germans turned up on it and two of us with hand grenades and one with a bazooka blew the front of it and charged it. The whole area was encompassed by a big red brick wall. We would restrict the entry from where the machine gun nest was right out of this exit. I was the last one out of the brick area and I looked down and there was a German soldier with a raincoat on who was leaning on his left arm. He raised his arm up and said, “I am injured, help me.” I stopped. There was nobody else around. My troops had run on to a railroad embankment out of sight just beyond the brick wall. I don’t know why I stopped, but I said, “Do you have a weapon?” He said, “Yes,” in broken English. I asked, “Where is it?” He pointed and he took out this P-38 and threw it out on the ground with his one good arm. He was bleeding really badly. All of a sudden, all hell broke loose. There were screams, children crying and everything. Out of a bomb shelter came I don’t know how many children and women. I didn’t even know the bomb shelter was there. It was a dugout affair with a lid. All these kids came charging out of there. They were terror stricken. That stops you and you start wondering, “Where am I?” One woman about 60 years old came out of that thing and she looked at my face—and I’m not being melodramatic—but I can’t describe the hatred that she showed for me in her face. I looked at her and pointed at the wounded German soldier and said, “Help that man.” You should have seen what effect it had on her. Her face softened and she said, “Ya, ya, ya.” She got down and started helping him. I heard this noise and I turn around and not even 20 feet from me, in high weeds, was a 5 German paratrooper. He got up and threw an M-42 machine gun on the ground right in front of me and surrendered to me. He had watched all of that go on when I was helping that other soldier. So, I say, “I’m alive today because I was kind to that soldier.” There are several of those kinds of stories, and yet, I killed Germans. Anyone can tell you the same story. It’s a matter of what you’re cast into and what the role is. I killed some, but I didn’t hate them all. SC: Did you make close friends during your service? RS: My company commander is 84-years-old and still alive. I was platoon leader of the first platoon until I was wounded and he’s still my best friend today. He lives in St. Charles, Missouri. You form all kinds of friendships. We ran our own reunions for the division and for our company for 25 to 30 years after the war. We’ve quit now. Everybody is too darn old and can’t make it anymore. You really do form some friendships. SC: Any other memorable experiences that you could share with us? RS: A platoon attacked toward this big chemical plant of some kind in Dorsten, Germany. We got up there and by my estimate there were probably 3,000 displaced workers in there that the Germans held. They were well fed, which confused us because they wouldn’t want to feed people they were trying to starve to death. We got in there and these people had run the German guards off. It was a place called Maral and it was the largest synthetic rubber plant in the world we were told. It was never bombed because of the number of prisoners that were there. They were Belgian, French, and everything. The British didn’t want it and it was particularly safe at that time. When we broke through the gates 6 of that place, you should have seen the celebration that took place. Those people must have been in there for three years or more before we came in and freed them. That was an experience. SC: Did you ever come across any concentration camps? RS: No. The only thing I came to was that one at Maral. Those were talented workers, so the Germans were feeding them well and treating them decently. SC: Did you come back to Ogden? RS: Yes, I came back to Ogden. I was born and raised in Ogden and stayed here all my career. In fact, this place where we are right now was part of the old Ogden Army Depot and I retired as a chief civilian of this facility. You know what it’s done for me? They’ve got me in room 120—that’s the furthest you can get from the front gate—and I sit there and I look at my domain and it is a three inch window sill. That’s all of my glory for retiring as a chief civilian with 37 years of service. I think, “Well, it all comes back to haunt you one way or the other.” SC: You worked at the defense depot in Ogden? RS: I retired from there. SC: How long ago did you retire? RS: I retired on the 4th of January 1980. A long time ago. SC: What have you been doing since? RS: Well, I have not worked for pay any place one single day. I love history and my wife and I used to love to travel and see history and things like that. We traveled 7 all over the country looking at sites. I’m a history buff when it comes to the Civil War and several others. I’ve had no trouble staying occupied. SC: Is your wife still with you? RS: No, my wife died of Alzheimer’s eight years ago. SC: Do you have children? RS: I have three. SC: Where are they located? RS: One of them is located eight miles north of Tucson, Arizona. He’s chief geologist for a big American mining company. He’s got a good job and he’s earned it all. My other son has been employed for 37 years as a switchman for the Union Pacific railroad. My daughter left when they closed the depot and now she’s working at Hill Field. SC: How about grandchildren? RS: I have seven grandchildren around here and another in Arizona. SC: Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us having to do with your military service? RS: I had some success, but I’ll tell you why I might have had some success. I was a one-striper—a private first-class—and one-stripers aren’t told much in the Army because they haven’t been around long enough. They had this big review by two major generals, General Anderson and General Green and my sergeant who was in charge of this tank that I happened to be the driver in. I’d been back at Ft. 8 Knox Kentucky on a course on the armaments of a tank. My damn worthless sergeant, that’s all I can call him, went on sick leave so all these tanks were lined up there and I’m the only one that’s in the head row. Here come the two major generals, Anderson and Green, who do you suppose they head for in that big row? They aren’t looking for sergeants; they’re looking for one-stripers. They walked over and I looked at the look on my company commander’s face and I think he was saying that my career was over. Anyway, these guys walked right over to me and General Anderson said, “Where’s your sergeant?” I said, “He’s on sick call, sir.” He was mumbling. He said, “Can you explain the working of that 75mm gun in that tank you’re driving?” I had just come out of the armory center a week before, so I had all the confidence in the world and said, “Yes, sir.” I lead them up to the top of the tank and I got down in the turret so they could listen and these two generals sat and listened to me go through the name, chapter and verse. That’s not bragging because I ought to be able to do that. That’s opportunity and timing. Those things change your life and that one changed mine. SC: In what way did it change your life? RS: It changed mine from being a one-striper private to getting recognized and being a corporal the next day and a sergeant in three weeks. Then, I was sent to Officer’s Candidate School in Fort Benning to get commissioned. That one event changed all of that. I recall when I had been major sergeant, my company commander called me in and said, “Sergeant Stegen, I want you to apply for Officer’s Candidate School.” I said, “I can’t be an officer.” He said, “I didn’t ask 9 you. Get the papers from the First Sergeant and have them on my desk Tuesday morning, do you understand that?” I said, “Yes, sir.” So, almost against my will, I’m on the way to Fort Benning to be a major infantry officer. The thing I’m saying is, “A lot of what you do is opportunity.” You’ve got to perform when it comes to you. I was very fortunate on timing. SC: Well, I want to thank you for coming today. As a citizen of the United States, I want to thank you for your service. My dad served in World War II, but he died when I was eight so he never got to tell me about his experience. We all appreciate what you all did. RS: I would have felt terrible if I hadn’t been able to go. It’s just the way it was. SC: We, as a nation, are really grateful for what you and your associates did. Thank you very much for being here. RS: I hope I didn’t saturate you, but the things that impress me are the human events that occur. SC: Yes. Thank you for being here. We appreciate your time. It has been a wonderful experience for us all.