Marvin H. Gohlke was born in Texas in November 1921. He was the oldest child. His mother had four more sons. She died when he was 10 years old. He had to help his father take care of the other children. This was the beginning of the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. His father was a rancher. He went to school in a one-room schoolhouse. He started at seven years old. His family spoke German. He had to learn to speak English. He graduated from high school in 1940 and then attended a technical college for two years. He was in college on 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor Day [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He remembers that it was a Sunday. He was pre-med [Annotator’s Note: pre-medical education track for those studying to become doctors]. He registered for the draft. He was deferred from the draft as long as he was in college because pre-med was an essential job. Then in 1942, he transferred to the University of Texas in Austin, Texas. He took the test for Army Specialist Training [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program; generally referred to just by the initials ASTP; a program designed to educate massive numbers of soldiers in technical fields such as engineering and foreign languages and to commission those individuals at a fairly rapid pace in order to fill the need for skilled junior officers]. In September 1943, he was ready for medical school. He was hoping to use the Army Specialized Training School to go to medical school. He was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia for basic training.

Marvin H. Gohlke went to basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. The ASTP [Annotator's Note: generally referred to just by the initials ASTP; a program designed to educate massive numbers of soldiers in technical fields such as engineering and foreign languages and to commission those individuals at a fairly rapid pace in order to fill the need for skilled junior officers] was discontinued because the Army needed bodies. He was sent to North Carolina for advanced infantry training. He was put into the 94th Infantry [Annotator’s Note: Company C, 1st Battalion, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division] to go to Europe. They qualified as expert infantrymen. He was a rifleman. They left Camp Shanks, New York on 12 August 1944 for Europe. They landed in England and then moved on to France. His part of the division was sent to protect Lorient [Annotator’s Note: Lorient, France] from German submarines. The 77th Division [Annotator’s Note: 77th Infantry Division] was crossing the English Channel to replace them and the German submarines sank some of them. The start of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was when the Germans made their last major push. The Germans made quite a dent back into France. Gohlke remembers being moved to the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] after Christmas 1944. They were put on trucks and sent to the bottom of the Bulge. It was well fortified with pillboxes [Annotator’s Note: a type of blockhouse, or concrete dug-in guard-post]. It was very cold. They pushed the Germans back. They did not have a lot of information on the defense areas they were going into. They could not see the mines because they were covered by snow. The attacking group was under Captain Schwab [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling]. They were assigned to relieve the trapped Americans. They sustained many casualties because of the mines. Gohlke used a dead soldier as a shield. His left hand was cut. This was the only wound he received during this battle. He was awarded the Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is an award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy].

Marvin H. Gohlke did not plan to be a hero. His goal was to do what he had to and to survive. The 94th Division [Annotator’s Note: 94th Infantry Division] was part of the 3rd Army under Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. Patton was determined to gain the objective. On the 20th of January [Annotator’s Note: 1945], they made a big push to get the Germans away from the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s]. It was well-fortified with pillboxes [Annotator’s Note: a type of blockhouse, or concrete dug-in guard-post]. The Germans knew they were moving up. They started firing on them. A piece of shrapnel was sizzling in the mud next to Gohlke’s right arm. He saw many casualties. As they moved up the hill, they ran into schu mines [Annotator's Note: Schu-mine 42, Schutzenmine 42 or rifleman's mine model 1942]. A good friend stepped on a mine and he lost his left foot and had his right ankle mangled. Gohlke had a lot of stuff blown into his back. He remembers hearing one young man calling for his mother after getting blown up. They lay in the mud until other Americans came up and used bayonets to find the active shoe mines. After the battle, he got a clean gun and clean clothes.

Marvin H. Gohlke was on a combat patrol. They were supposed to get an object or area. He was on the extreme left flank moving into the German position. They came under heavy fire. He did not know the rest had pulled back and he kept going forward. He crawled onto a badly wounded German. The German was wearing a cap. This meant he was a burp gunner [Annotator's Note: German MP-40, or Maschinenpistole 40, 9mm submachine gun]. Gohlke asked him in German where his machine gun was. The German kept asking him not to shoot him. Gohlke kept going forward. As he moved forward, he saw a fresh mound of dirt and a burp gunner. He fired at the gunner. He hid behind a boulder for several hours. He made it to an overhanging ledge. He stayed there all day. He was going to die fighting if he had to. He had to get back to his men before dark. They would change the password every night. His men thought he had been killed or captured. He got five or six replacements in his squad. Two German officers surrendered to him.

Marvin H. Gohlke was out of his foxhole about an hour before nightfall. He heard the Germans were firing mortars at them. He was hit by shrapnel and was badly hurt. The medics carried him down the hill on a stretcher. It was late enough that he could see the shells exploding. Fortunately, the Germans did not knock the bridge out. They took him to Luxembourg. He could hear wounded Germans yelling for medics. He was put into a makeshift operating room. They took shrapnel out of his right hand. The next day he was put on a C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] and sent to England where they operated on him again. He stayed in a hut for around ten days. His brother Aldo was standing out there. He had come over from Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France]. Gohlke was sent back to Camp Shanks, New York. He had two months of convalescent furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] before being discharged at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He went back to the University of Texas [Annotator’s Note: in Austin, Texas], and then went to medical school the following September.

Marvin H. Gohlke was in the States [Annotator’s Note: United States] on convalescent furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] on VE-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945]. He admired the men he was overseas with, but not the sergeants at boot camp. His job in the military was to do what was necessary and to survive. War is hell. There were a lot of mines still there after the war. He sustained some PTSD [Annotator's Note: post-traumatic stress disorder; a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event either experienced or witnessed]. He lost his memory for a week’s worth of time. He would wake up in the middle of the night, and jump under the bed to escape an artillery barrage that was not really there. He did this for several years after the war. In July 1946, he met his wife. They went out and played miniature golf. Then he made a date to go dancing with her. Thirteen days after he met her, he proposed to her. She accepted. They married on 26 November 1946. He used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts, and unemployment] for medical school, but his wife worked and helped him through med school as well.

Marvin H. Gohlke knew his wife was the right person after just 13 days. They were married for 65 years. The 94th Division [Annotator’s Note: 94th Infantry Division] performed well under Patton’s command [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. [Annotator’s Note: Gohlke has the interviewer read a piece about him from a book.] He has never been to any of the reunions. Many of the G.I.s [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] were from the northeast and it was too far to travel. He had his own medical practice and a thousand acres with a cattle ranch.

Marvin H. Gohlke went through extremely traumatic experiences. When looking back at his experiences, it has a mental effect on him. [Annotator’s Note: Gohlke talks about his wife.] His wife was in the Navy during the war for eight or nine months.