Gerald Abbenhaus was born in January 1920 on a farm in northeast Nebraska. He went to Bloomfield High [Annotator's Note: Bloomfield Public High School, Bloomfield, Nebraska] in 1937. He worked in a grocery store and saved some money for one year of college at the University of Nebraska Agriculture school [Annotator's Note: University of Nebraska-Lincoln, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Lincoln, Nebraska]. He would shovel snow for money, so in May, he had no snow, and therefore no money. Luckily, he got a scholarship for tuition for his next year. The draft came along and he joined ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corp] and was accepted into the advanced class. This meant he did not have to register. In February 1943, he was inducted into the Army, but he was able to finish his education. He got his degree and then left the next day to Fort Riley, Kansas for a couple of weeks. Abbenhaus was on leave until called as a class back to Fort Riley and Field Artillery School in August 1943. He became a second lieutenant. Then he went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for a month and then was assigned to the 176th Field Artillery Battalion. He went to Fort Dix, New Jersey then to Camp Buckner, North Carolina. It was 20 below zero when they left. The unit went overseas but Abbenhaus stayed behind and was transferred to the 808th Field Artillery Battalion as their communications officer. He then decided to be a liaison pilot and passed the Air Corps physical. He was ordered to the Infantry School after D-Day [Annotator's Note: the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944]. He went to Fort Benning, Georgia and was assigned to the 76th Infantry Division [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 385th Infantry Regiment, 76th Infantry Division] at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. He met a Colonel Harrison [Annotator's Note: no given name provided] there who would later become a big factor in his career.

Gerald Abbenhaus went overseas November 1944 [Annotator's Note: as an infantry officer in Company H, 2nd Battalion, 385th Infantry Regiment, 76th Infantry Division]. The port at Cherbourg, France was not open, so they landed in Southampton, England and spent a month in Bournemouth, England. On either Christmas or New Year's Eve they were supposed to go to France to push back on the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, Ardennes, Belgium]. Another unit took their place instead and one of the last u-boat [Annotator's Note: German submarine] raids and that division was decimated in the English Channel. His unit made it over to France during a wild snowstorm. It was very cold. They were picked up in Soissons, France and moved to the front in trucks. As they were riding along, he saw a sign for Houffalize which was supposed to be controlled by the Germans. As they got nearer to the town, shells started landing behind them instead of in front of them. The division was scattered and going in the wrong direction. Abbenhaus was in Company H with a mortar platoon at the time. They stayed in a barn without winter gear, but they found blankets and made mittens for themselves. They went down to Luxembourg in front of the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: series of defensive fortifications built by Germany in the 1930s] in a holding position. Patton [Annotator's Note: U.S. Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton] wanted to break through. The 417th Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: 417th Infantry Regiment, 76th Infantry Division] was assigned to the 5th Infantry [Annotator's Note: 5th Infantry Division], who got the credit for it, but the 417th is who really made the penetration across the line. They took heavy losses doing so. They went into Echternach, Luxembourg. The Germans had taken the town during the Bulge. German pillboxes [Annotator's Note: reinforced structure with gun ports] along the river front were well fortified. The river was swollen due to snow melt. Abbenhaus' unit, the 385th Infantry Regiment, replaced the 417th. Their equipment was not good enough to take the pillboxes easily, so it took a long time. Patton wanted a bridge at Koblenz, Germany, but Abbenhaus' unit could not break through. They went into a holding position, waiting to cross the Rhine.

Gerald Abbenhaus and his infantry unit [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 385th Infantry Regiment, 76th Infantry Division] crossed the Rhine River near Boppard, Germany. Patton [Annotator's Note: U.S. Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton] came up and they sent diversion fire across the river so another unit could cross the river further downstream. Then they started across Germany, working with the 4th and 6th Tank Divisions [Annotator's Note: 4th and 6th Armored Divisions]. They made it to the Elbe River. The Russians saw them playing touch football and asked to join them. The commander said no, because the 69th Infantry Division was supposed to meet them officially. This was outside of Dresden, Germany. Abbenhaus was to clean some buildings for the field artillery unit coming behind them. He did not have his own men and had to use men from different units. A Colonel Harrison, with whom he had a had a hard time in basic training in the United States, came to inspect it and found grease behind a stove. There was a regimental officers meeting that night and Abbenhaus was worried he was going to be in serious trouble, but nothing happened. Later in the war, Abbenhaus and his troops were in Mompach, Luxembourg in a holding position and Harrison had been assigned as their battalion commander. The units were trying to capture a German soldier to gather intelligence from. Abbenhaus was called to be the officer to do the job. Harrison was in charge and he put in a call for Abbenhaus. The Germans would string wire across the streets very low which made it hard to drive safely at night and Harrison would not leave his area for any reason at night. One night a soldier hit a wire while driving a jeep and was decapitated. Abbenhaus remained as Harrison's assistant running errands at night until April 1945. Harrison was relieved of his command and Abbenhaus was released back to Company H.

Gerald Abbenhaus says that the temperature and the mud were hard to fight as the Germans. In January 1945 they drove through Bastogne, Belgium at 20 below zero. Near late March or April their winter clothing finally arrived. After the war ended, Abbenhaus got leave and went to the Riviera in France for ten days. Then he was assigned to the 3rd Chemical Mortar Battalion which had gone through Africa. They were only used as regular mortars and they were training to go to Japan in September. but the war ended. Abbenhaus was then transferred to 1st Infantry Division, 26th Infantry Regiment. The US Army had started schools for people waiting to go home. Troisdorf, Germany had an Agriculture School and Abbenhaus was sent down there to be an instructor. He really enjoyed that duty. They got fresh milk and cheese as well as beer. He got four good horses for the school. He was finally able to go home by the end of June 1946. The 1st Infantry Division had moved their headquarters and were readying for troops to bring their families over for the occupation. Abbenhaus was asked to stay and close the Agriculture School but he declined.

Gerald Abbenhaus returned to the United States in July 1946. It was good that he was not able to come back right away as he had built up a lot of hatred towards the Germans. Staying in Germany longer meant that he had to intermingle with them. He then learned that they were the same as him in many ways and came to have a high regard for the Germans. Abbenhaus says that his career was not very spectacular, but it was educational. He does not consider himself a hero. They would get lost at times due to miscommunication. He was going into a town once and all of the people were headed the opposite direction. His battalion [Annotator's Note: 2nd Battalion, 385th Infantry Regiment, 76th Infantry Division] was coming into the opposite end of the town and the residents were fleeing. Another time he and his driver were fixing a flat tire and eight German soldiers came out and surrendered to them. By that time in the war, the German fighters were in their 40s and 50s. They could have easily killed him and his driver, but they did not. He did also meet others that kept shooting at them though. He had gone into a town where there had been SS training and those Germans would fight to the death. He witnessed an 18 year old there do everything he could to make them kill him even though he had already been captured. The prisoner finally spit in the face of an American guard who then did kill him.

On 6 August 1945, Gerald Abbenhaus was training with the 3rd Chemical Mortar Battalion north of Nuremburg, Germany. The town was full of German soldiers in a medical school who had been injured. He and his unit were on a hike when they found out that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. They were elated because they were all supposed to go to Japan next and they hoped this would end the war. Abbenhaus knew an invasion of Japan had to happen even though he did not want to take part. Some of the younger German people were very defiant after the war ended and would come into the base and steal things. Abbenhaus made friends with the officers who were running the town. The 1st Infantry Division was the housekeepers for the preparation of the War Crimes Commission [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials]. The younger officers did not seem to understand how damaged the infrastructure was and would complain. Abbenhaus ran a school for American soldiers in Troisdorf, Germany which was south of Ansbach, Germany. They taught agricultural courses there and some students said it gave them a head start in college on their return to the United States.

In August 1946, Gerald Abbenhaus separated from the U.S. Army at Fort Sheridan, Illinois as a first lieutenant. He stayed in the Army Reserve where he attained the rank of captain. In the 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, he was in Headquarters Company. He did consider a career in the Army working in the school system and teaching the dependents of servicemen stationed overseas. He received a master's degree from the University of Nebraska, and later received his Doctorate from the University of Illinois on fellowship. Abbenhaus did not have any trouble transitioning back to civilian life. He was accustomed to following and giving orders, which his children did not go along with very well. [Annotator's Note: Break for a tape change.] The 26th Regiment was in charge of guarding the War Crimes [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials] prisoners. Abbenhaus relates a story of a young guard who became a kind of friend with Herrman Göring [Annotator's Note: German Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring] who spoke English well. The guard would kid Göring about how shiny his boots were, and he asked him if he could have them after he was hanged. Göring said that he would not be hanged. The guard did not know that Göring had the poison he would use to take his own life in the heel of the boot. Abbenhaus said he was urged to visit the concentration camp which was close to where he was in Germany, but he chose not to. He had seen too many bodies when he crossed the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: series of defensive fortifications built by Germany in the 1930s]. Seeing the dead Germans was bittersweet because he was glad they were dead, but the bodies were stacked like firewood and frozen stiff and it was not pleasant to see humans like that.

Gerald Abbenhaus had wanted to become a liaison officer for his regiment, but the war ended before it could happen. A lot of the people who had come into Germany after being displaced by the fighting, were being sent back to their home countries. Those people did not want to go back. They took over German homes. At the school Abbenhaus ran, many of the workers had been in a medical detachment from Budapest, Hungary; not enemies, but not friends either. These medical students would clean houses for food. Around May or June 1946, they were beginning to go back home, but others fought being returned, especially to Poland. Abbenhaus had a Jewish boy that worked in the kitchen at his school and he had free run of the place. There was not enough capital for the Germans to start rebuilding the infrastructure, families came first. The Germans had nothing to work with. Horses had been used to move supplies between the German defensive positions. Many of them were killed in the fighting so Germany did not even have them to help with moving things.

Gerald Abbenhaus used the G.I. Bill to complete his education after the war. Abbenhaus cannot overemphasize how much of a role the G.I. Bill played in the rebuilding the American culture postwar. The caliber of students who used the G.I. Bill was fantastic. Asked about his war experiences, Abbenhaus says that penetrating the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: series of defensive fortifications built by Germany in the 1930s] is his most memorable experience. He had never seen anything like it. The firepower arrayed against the Americans was immense, but we just kept going. After the war, in the Army Reserve, Abbenhaus thought he would be called to Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War] but the only unit called where he was in Illinois, was the band. Most of the Active Reserve did not get called to go to Korea. He had moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota and it became hard for him to make the commitments, so around 1953 or 1954, he separated from the Army Reserve. He had attained the rank of captain upon his final discharge. Abbenhaus fought and served in World War 2 because it was his job to do so. The war broadened his perspective of the world and his personal interactions made it so that he learned to get along with people. The G.I. Bill gave him his advanced degree. He became a much more mature person through all of that. It is hard for him to measure what his service means to him except that he is very proud of his service and his country. World War 2 showed what Americans are like, united with a common purpose. He recalls the vapor trails of the bombers going overhead casting clouds on the ground. He says he was not a hero, he did what he was supposed to do.

Gerald Abbenhaus was used as a liaison between regiments because his commander did not want to go out at night. He and his driver would get lost often as the units moved around a bit and they did not use their lights at night to get around. Colonel Vangen [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] of Company E [Annotator's Note: Company E, 2nd Battalion, 385th Infantry Regiment, 76th Infantry Division] was one of the best. He was captured and escaped and found his way back to the regiment. Another captain there had gotten lost but not captured. Abbenhaus took them both from regiment back up to battalion. They went through a town that was burning and any time shots were fired the two captains would jump out of the jeep and into the ditch. These men still meet up at the conventions for the 76th Infantry Division. Abbenhaus feels that he is not up to date on what children learn in school, but he remembers a time when World War 2 was not being taught. Children now should learn that the world is better off because of the Allied victory in the war. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Abbenhaus to describe his recent donation to the museum.] Abbenhaus' troops had gone through factories and buildings clearing them and they found a new German aviator uniform and gave it to him. He sent it home and kept it. He also took a gun that he really liked. They could not do that after the war, only during it. He has had a very good life. He was always very confident that he was going to return from the war whole.