Herman Pbert was born in July 1926 in Piedicavallo, Italy near the Swiss border. His father had a construction business in West Virginia and Kentucky. He quarried stone [Annotator's Note: in Italy] and would inhale the silica created by the explosives they used. He got silicosis and was told if he stayed in Lynch, Kentucky which was a coal mining town, he would have a lot of problems. His father had a lot of homes and property in the Alps [Annotator's Note: extensive mountain range that lies entirely in Europe], so he moved his whole family. His father lived another 23 years. His mother was 36 and pregnant with Pbert. Since his parents were Americans, Pbert was registered as an American citizen born overseas. He got caught behind the lines during the war. His father was friendly with the vice consul Richard Tymond [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] who told them he needed to take them back to the United States because it looked like Italy was aligning with Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. His father was too sick to travel, and the family decided to stay with him. His father paid someone off to say they were Italian citizens. School started when you were two years old. They then had three years of kindergarten which was the equivalent of going through the third or fourth grades. He could read and write. He then had five years of elementary school and then Liccio [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], a Roman word, and then three years of high school. He had a college there that was strictly for construction of roads and bridges. By 17, he was a construction engineer.

By 17, Herman Pbert was a construction engineer [Annotator's Note: in Piedicavallo, Italy]. In the meantime, the war started. The king of Italy [Annotator's Note: Victor Emmanuel III] declared an armistice [Annotator's Note: with the Allies on 8 September 1943], imprisoned Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also known as il Duce] and dismantled the Army. They wound up with the British prisoners of war in Northern Italy having no guards, so they ran away. Pbert and his family had 36 Australian and New Zealander prisoners on their doorstep. He helped get them into Switzerland through the mountains. His parents brought he and his family up 100 percent as Americans. As soon as the underground [Annotator's Note: Italian resistance movement, an umbrella term for the different groups that fought the Nazis and Italian Fascists] started, Pbert was right there. He did not fight to save Italy, he fought because he was an American. In the middle of 1943, he realized he would be in the war. His father had a lot of weapons. Pbert got a sniper rifle from his cousin who used it to hunt chamois mountain goats in the Alps. It had a good scope. He used to snipe SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] officers. He had no ifs and buts about fighting for his country and the best way to do that was to join the resistance.

When Herman Pbert joined the resistance [Annotator's Note: Italian resistance movement, an umbrella term for the different groups that fought the Nazis and Italian Fascists], the first ones to try and help them was the British MI6 [Annotator's Note: United Kingdom Secret Intelligence Service, commonly called MI6]. They parachuted two MI6 agents in to help, but their radios did not work well, and their Italian dialect was not good. They disappeared after a couple of weeks. Then the OSS [Annotator's Note: Office of Strategic Services; pre-runner to today's Central Intelligence Agency or CIA] came in. They really helped. He took them to meet his parents. His mother had a West Virginian accent, and it was a beautiful thing. B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] dropped supplies, weapons, munitions, and K-rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] to them. Medical supplies really helped them. They were trying to pick up and shoot the SS officers [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization]. They never could really do face-to-face battle. They were too good with mortars. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] said that each time they killed a German soldier, three Italian civilians would be shot. They were then ordered not to shoot anymore soldiers and only to try and destroy the supply lines. The United States Army was invading Southern Italy at the time. The best training Pbert had was from his father and his brother from when he was six years old. Pbert was like a cat on the mountain and that is what saved him. He started skiing when he was two years old, so he was good in the wintertime. He had no training but trained other guys from the cities how to be in the mountains. The SS was not that good in the mountains. The only time Pbert got wounded was when a whole company of Alpenjager [Annotator's Note: Gebirgsjäger in German, light infantry, alpine or mountain troops of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland] was sent, the ski and mountain troops from Austria. They were tough. Pbert got five pieces of shrapnel in his legs from them. They had split up to cover their tracks. Pbert was alone and was about 50 feet from a crest and did not realize they had machine guns. He was shot at and hid under a stone. The bullets hit and the shrapnel was the ricochets off of it. Pbert escaped and got into a mountain hut. He had a good medical kit that his mother prepared, and he fixed himself. He had gotten out because he saw them breaking down the machine gun. The only other weapon they had was the machine pistol [Annotator's Note: MP 40, Maschinenpistole 40, 9mm submachine gun] and they were too far away to use them. He jumped down and skied away.

Day-to-day, Herman Pbert just tried to stay alive, find food, and get ammunition. C4s [Annotator's Note: Composition C-4 plastic explosive] were being dropped to them as well as items that destroyed car tires. They would throw them when German convoys came through. Around the end of May, a German patrol came to the village and put up a sign that said that every male from 16 to 36 years of age had to report to the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] in the valley to be sent to a concentration camp and work for the Third Reich. Four names were added as targets. Romer Peraldo Bert [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] which was the name he took during the war to pretend to be Italian. His brother Nello Peraldo Bert [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], Eros Yolon Yon Yulon [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] and Ermin Yolon Yon Yulon [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify]. They did not know there was a spy. All four of them were American citizens, the last two being from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was told that if the four did not surrender, the Germans would burn their village of 750 people. They decided to surrender because they knew they would have burned the village and killed all the people. This had happened in another village, and they did not want to take that chance. On 3 June [Annotator's Note: unable to verify the year] at ten o'clock, they surrendered. Twenty-one others were captured, and they were all interrogated. They were put on a train to Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] headquarters in Biella [Annotator's Note: Biella, Italy]. They were interrogated and then imprisoned. The SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] in the valley were trying to find out what unit they were with and who the superiors were. The Gestapo was very busy. An officer lined them up and said they were condemned to be machine gunned the next morning at the Piazza Quintino Sella [Annotator's Note: in Iglesias, Italy] in town. A chaplain of the German Army came in and said he could give them their last rites. He asked where they had been captured. The chaplain said that 22 partisans from a different area were captured too. They had ambushed and killed five German officers and had been condemned to death too. He said he would be right back, but never returned. Pbert and the others were awakened the next morning and marched through the town. When they got to the road to the square, they were turned away. They heard the machine gun going that was killing the 22 [Annotator's Note: Salussola massacre, 9 March 1945 in Salussola, Italy]. There was a concentration camp at the Biella Sports Stadium where he was put. A German officer lined them up and told them that their death sentence had been commuted and they were to work in Germany. He said that they would be shot when the Third Reich [Annotator's Note: term for the Nazi regime in Germany from 30 January 1933 to 8 May 1945] was victorious. Now they all knew they had to escape. Better to be killed doing that than killed when the son-of. [Annotator's Note: Pbert cuts himself off and then tells someone off camera he was about to say, "the son-of-a-bitches." He laughs when he realizes he said it anyway, and adds, "it is true, they were."] They stayed in the camp for a few weeks. They were put on boxcars for a day and a half to the next camp with no food, water, or toilets.

Herman Pbert was sent to Casalmette di San Paolo concentration camp [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] at an Italian Army camp. There were about 700 prisoners there being gathered and were not there too long. They got minimal food and water. They had 30 seconds a day at the water spigot with tomato cans. They would be hit in the back with sticks. If you went over your 30 seconds, the time was taken from the next person in line. In the morning, they got what they called coffee which was probably a grain or acorn roasted and ground. They also got one piece of dark bread which had corncobs, or beans, ground up in it. It was never once not moldy but that was good because the mold provided penicillin [Annotator's Note: an antibiotic]. Eight prisoners would take a cart and a mule and go in the cabbage fields to harvest them. Another group would get wood from the woods. The cabbage was boiled in water and that was what they got. They often got green worms. If you were at the end of the line, you got a big scoop of mud. He went from 155 pounds to 110 when he came out after a couple of months. His mother helped him escape.

Herman Pbert's mother helped him, and others escape [Annotator's Note: from a Nazi concentration camp in Italy]. His family had a lot of houses and about 2,500 acres of forest and pastures. They used to sell the wood to the factories in the valley that produced their energy with the wood. The man who bought the lumber came from the Austrian border and knew perfect German. During the war, the textile factories were taken over by the Germans. A colonel in charge, became friends with the lumber buyer. Pbert's family did not know their wood was helping the Germans. The man was able to get inside the colonel's office and found some papers with the colonel's signature and stamp. The man put Pbert and his brother's names on it and said they were indispensable for the production of the textiles for the German Army. His mother came to the camp, and they all went to the Commandant's office. About ten minutes after, shots were heard outside the gate. Their guard rushed to the gate. Pbert's mother went outside, looked around, saw nobody, and they all walked out along the walls. The guards on the towers were looking at the gate and did not see them. They got into a field and escaped. They got back to their valley after two and a half days. All of the farmers were against the Germans, helped them out. Pbert returned to his unit [Annotator's Note: in the Italian resistance movement, an umbrella term for the different groups that fought the Nazis and Italian Fascists].

Herman Pbert returned to his village [Annotator's Note: Piedicavallo, Italy, after escaping from a Nazi prison camp in Italy with his brother]. His other brothers had been arrested and were made ski instructors. His middle brother was a famous rock climber and was made an instructor of that as well for the mountain troops. His father was getting worse and worse [Annotator's Note: his father suffered from silicosis] and they could not leave him. Food was very scarce. His father had thought ahead of time and bought little farms that had grains and beans, so they did survive. He was able to supply them [Annotator's Note: the Italian resistance fighters] with food as well. B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] were dropping C4 [Annotator's Note: Composition C-4 plastic explosive] to help them blow up bridges and railroads. They lost one group who was going to blow up a bridge. A spy in love with a German officer got them killed. There were 22 of them. [Annotator's Note: Pbert discusses this Salussola massacre which occured on 9 March 1945 in Salussola, Italy in the clip titled "Surrendering to the SS" of this interview]. The spy that gave his group up was a guy who lived two houses beyond his. His name was Calaleo Zorrio [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify]. When he was imprisoned by the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization], that guy came down the stairs with three German officers, smiling and joking. When he saw Pbert, he put his head down. In 1950, Pbert met him in the village in the middle of the street and Zorrio fell on his knees asking Pbert not to shoot him. Pbert pulled his gun out and put at Zorrio's head but could not pull the trigger. He should have. After the OSS [Annotator's Note: Office of Strategic Services; pre-runner to today's Central Intelligence Agency or CIA] left [Annotator's Note: his village near the end of the war] and the GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] reached them, Pbert was taken and put in the American Army hospital in Livorno [Annotator's Note: Livorno, Italy] in Tuscana [Annotator's Note: Tuscany, Italy]. A G2 [Annotator's Note: G-2 refers to the military intelligence staff in the United States Army at the Divisional Level and above] officer debriefed him because when the GIs reached his village, they found out there were two groups of underground in the next valley over that were infiltrated by the Communist organizers from Yugoslavia. Those two groups were real Communists and were ready to go to Rome [Annotator's Note: Rome, Italy] and take over the government. Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] was preparing for that. Pbert's unit went in with their sidearms and were to put them in an armory and disband. Ninety percent were happy to run. The organizers from Yugoslavia sent by Tito [Annotator's Note: Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman; Former President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia], came down, saw what was happening, and then disappeared. They had had to sit for two hours a day and listen to Russian propaganda and indoctrination. They could not say they were fighting the Communists. The G2 told them to swear they would not talk about this. He did not talk about it even to his son who was in the Air Force in intelligence. [Annotator's Note: Offscreen Pbert's son tells him to stick World War 2 and they laugh.]

Herman Pbert was in the hospital as the war was ending. He was told he had done a good job cleaning his own shrapnel wounds [Annotator's Note: received as a member of the Italian resistance movement, an umbrella term for the different groups that fought the Nazis and Italian Fascists]. They sent him home. A couple of weeks later, his friend the vice-consul came to see them. He gave Pbert a piece of paper to say that he was an American citizen. They had made themselves Italian citizens during the war [Annotator's Note: to prevent being imprisoned by the Nazis]. He got a spot on a troop carrier to New York. In 1950, the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] started, and he got called. Pbert's father could not travel because he was too sick, so Pbert's family stayed in Italy. His older brother became a professor of music. His other brother became a construction engineer and studied electrical engineering. He went to Brazil to build electric lines and became an industrialist there. Pbert's parents made him so American that he felt like he was coming home. The Italian government gave them identity cards at the end. They had not called themselves by their regular names due to spies. His battle name was Romer. Pbert had relatives in the United States. His father gave his company to a nephew in Beckley, West Virginia and they were doing quite well. Pbert called them. They told him they could not use him. Pbert met a friend in the restaurant business and went into that. In 1950, he was called up. He went to Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: in Trenton, New Jersey], and he was not put through basic training. He was put in a special unit in Virginia to learn about the new weapons in the Army.

Herman Pbert went to Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: in Trenton, New Jersey], and he was not put through basic training. He was put in a special unit in Virginia to learn about the new weapons in the Army. When he got there, the captain in charge of 168 of them, pointed out that two of them, Pbert and another guy, spoke perfect German. The other guy knew about four other languages, including Russian. They were sent back to Germany. Pbert was assigned to the 24th Constabulary Squadron [Annotator's Note: 24th Constabulary Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment, 1st Constabulary Brigade] in Hersfeld [Annotator's Note: Bad-Hersfeld, Germany] and Fulda [Annotator's Note: Fulda, Germany]. They were taking information from the refugees who crossing from East Germany to find out where the Russian troops were. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Pbert how it felt to be going into a second war.] Pbert wished he could have given ten years to the country [Annotator's Note: the United States]. In 1951, we were so close to World War 3, it was not funny. The Russians and German Army [Annotator's Note: East German Army] were massed at the border. The only thing that saved us was the fact that we [Annotator's Note: the United States] had the atomic bomb, and they did not. The refugees were trying to run away from Communism. Pbert had six interpreters from East Germany. They were trying to pick out spies the Russians were putting into the refugees. The interpreters would try to find them out and then send them back.

When Herman Pbert was going back to Germany [Annotator's Note: in 1950], he said he would be so bad against them [Annotator's Note: against the Germans; he had been a member of the Italian resistance movement, an umbrella term for the different groups that fought the Nazis and Italian Fascists]. He got there and saw that everything was bombed, they were starving, the men were all dead, and they were miserable. He felt sorry for them. It was unbelievable. He fought so hard in World War 2 against the Communists and in the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] too. His Korean War service now helps him quite a bit with medical services. He has a caregiver three times a week through them. It is fantastic. The Army does not recognize his World War 2 service [Annotator's Note: he fought with the Italian resistance as an American citizen born overseas]. Some Soviet spies probably did make it across the German border. In the beginning, they were in uniform and jeeps. There were a lot of refugees who were reserved in talking to them. They were then given Volkswagen Bugs [Annotator's Note: Volkswagen Beetles, German automobile] and dressed as civilians. They were easier in to talk with them. Nobody was a Nazi in Germany now and they said they were all against Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. Being with the 24th Constabulary [Annotator's Note: 24th Constabulary Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment, 1st Constabulary Brigade], they had a five-mile radius along the border where no one was allowed. They had their .45s [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] loaded all the time while in it. They had duty seven days for 24 hours a day, and then were given a few days off. They had observation posts on every hill with an armored car looking into East Germany to report on Russian troop movements. He was asked about his World War 2 history. In the beginning, they had fatigues [Annotator's Note: military work uniform] in the cold of winter. About 30 percent wound up with frostbite, including him. He was sent to the hospital in Frankfurt [Annotator's Note: Frankfurt, Germany]. He had peritonitis [Annotator's Note: inflammation of the membrane lining the abdominal wall]. He now has prostate cancer. He was asked about his wounds [Annotator's Note: scars] and he told them they were his World War 2 shrapnel wounds. They were going to give him a medical discharge and 25 percent disability and send him home. He told them about what was going on at the border and refused. He was sent back.

Herman Pbert did not talk much about his World War 2 experience with anyone until about ten years ago [Annotator's Note: at the time of his interview]. He had sworn not to talk about it [Annotator's Note: as a member of the Italian resistance movement, an umbrella term for the different groups that fought the Nazis and Italian Fascists], so he did not. He suffered no lasting effects from World War 2 or the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He did have nightmares and ringing in his ears. Now he has a monotone sound, but it does not last long. He has nightmares about being condemned to death or being in the concentration camp [Annotator's Note: Pbert discusses this in the clips titled "Surrendering", "Prisoner", and "Escaping the Prison Camp" in this interview] to the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] and close battles. They never really fought battles face-to-face with the Germans. The SS were too good, so they would just hit and run. That is why they were called guerillas. His parents had pounded into them that they were American, and they had to do everything they could for their country. At home, they spoke English. The vice-consul came to them a few months before the war and told them to stop. They were also told to tell anyone who knew they were American not to talk about it. His father had a lot of money so he could make them look Italian in the books. The problem with that is that after the war, he was Italian, and they wanted him in the Italian Army. The vice-consul issued him a passport to stop it. He got space on a troop carrier and went home [Annotator's Note: to the United States]. His most memorable experience of the war was when it was over. The beautiful American tank rolling into Biella [Annotator's Note: Biella, Italy] was quite a sight. The war made his life better. After the war, he tried to find the chaplain who had stopped the Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] from shooting him but could not find him. He wanted to thank him. Pbert is proud of his service, would do it all over again, and would give another ten years of his life for his country right now. On 9-11 [Annotator's Note: 11 September 2001 Attacks; series of coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States] he called up and said to put him on something to help, but he was told he was too old. He hopes America never forgets World War 2, but he fears the new generations are going to. He thinks [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is doing a very good job. He loves the museum and gives what he can. They should continue to teach the war to future generations, but he is afraid they will not listen. It is important to be patriotic, but that is diminishing in the United States.