[Annotator's Note: The clip starts with the interviewer mid-sentence explaining how the interview will proceed.] Richard O. "Otto" Bertz was born in May 1922 in Spring City, Pennsylvania. He graduated from school in 1940. There was some talk of the war with his friends, but his parents did not talk about it. His father was the Chief of Police. One day there was a knock at the door. There were two FBI [Annotator's Note: Federal Bureau of Investigation] agents with a picture of someone. They asked if his father knew him. He said he did. This was about the time that they had picked up spies on Long Island Sound [Annotator's Note: tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean between Connecticut and Long Island, New York]. There were six of them. This man had been dating Bertz's cousin who had lost her house during the flood [Annotator's Note: Johnstown flood of 1936, Johnstown, Cambria County, Pennsylvania]. They did not know she was dating the guy. They found out later that the man had a box with a radio in it that was related with the spies. They did not learn anything more about it. The man's name was Hauptmann, which was the name of the man [Annotator's Note: Bruno Richard Hauptmann] who kidnapped Lindbergh's [Annotator's Note: Charles Augustus Lindbergh, American aviator] child [Annotator's Note: 20-month-old son kidnapped and killed 1 March 1932]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bertz if he remembers where he was when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He was at home. Bertz wondered why they did not know the planes were coming in. Later he took a trip to Hawaii and went above the Arizona [Annotator's Note: the USS Arizona (BB-39)] and he could see the turrets. There were a lot of Japanese there and he thought they had gall to be there. He later took another trip to a 94th [Annotator's Note: 94th Infantry Division] reunion at Niagara Falls [Annotator's Note: Niagara Falls, New York]. He got lunch and people were putting stuff in their pockets. A lot of those were Japanese. One wanted to have her picture taken wearing Bertz's wife's cap He did not say anything, but he still resented it.

Richard O. "Otto" Bertz wanted to fly but found out he could not so he decided to go to work. He decided to do drafting work if he could not be a pilot. He was colorblind. A Marine explained to him why that mattered. He decided to go to California. He was in Ocean Park [Annotator's Note: Ocean Park, Santa Monica, California] and lived in a hotel. He ate his meals with the aircraft guys learning to be mechanics. They would get in buses each morning and go to what is now L.A. Airport [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California]. Bertz would go to the civilian portion there. He had a window to the longest runway. He heard a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] and looked out the window. The B-25 went down and went out of the airport and over a road. It hit two cars and killed everybody in it. The plane caught fire and the crew was lost. A couple weeks later they had their first air raid. There were shrouds over the windows that he opened. He could see searchlights going and the ack-ack guns [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery] opened fire. It was 28 February [Annotator's Note: 28 February 1942]. The ack-ack dropped through people's cars. They fired 2,200 rounds. Bertz went to work for the Bud [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] company. They were building a small plane. He did drafting there. He got his card [Annotator's Note: his draft notice] and went to Philly [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. It got colder and colder. They stopped and he thought he was at an airbase. He found out he was in the infantry [Annotator's Note: 94th Infantry Division]. There was a foot of snow on the ground. He got a blanket made of wool, which he is allergic to. His first day he had KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] duty. It was Christmas Day [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1942].

Richard O. "Otto" Bertz went to Kansas [Annotator's Note: Camp Phillips in Salina, Kansas] and did training. He then went to Knoxville, Tennessee too. He was sent overseas from New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] on the Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Elizabeth]. They kept going south and started zig-zagging [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] because a submarine was after them. There were men playing poker [Annotator's Note: playing card game] on deck. They went to Greenwich, Scotland. They [Annotator's Note: Bertz and the rest of Company D, 1st Battalion, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division] had to offload there and went down through England by train. They were near the 8th Air Force for a couple of weeks. Then they went over to France. They got to Utah Beach [Annotator's Note: Utah Beach, Normandy, France] in the middle of August [Annotator's Note: August 1944]. They went across the Channel [Annotator's Note: the English Channel] and unloaded off an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. The went over the side to a lighter ship. He was worried he would be crushed between the ships or sink because of the weight he was carrying. They went up the beach. He could see the yellow lines that said mines were there. He could not believe he was seeing Castle Mont-Saint-Michel [Annotator's Note: Le Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy, France]. There was some quicksand there and girl got sucked in. He did a drawing there.

Training was very good. Richard O. "Otto" Bertz had been an Eagle Scout [Annotator's Note: highest achievement in the Boy Scouts of America]. In Kansas, a cyclone [Annotator's Note: or tornado] came along and ripped things apart. When he got into France, they [Annotator's Note: Bertz and Company D, 1st Battalion, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division] were going to be there for a while. He went to Lorient [Annotator's Note: Lorient, France from 10 September 1944 to 1 January 1945]. There were 25,000 Germans captured there. They set up their machine guns and mortars. A friend of Bertz's was the forward observer for the mortars. Bertz went to a hedgerow [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation] and dug in as far as he could and made a hovel [Annotator's Note: small, simply constructed dwelling] where he stayed from August until 1 January [Annotator's Note: August 1944 to 1 January 1945]. He had candles. He had a new sleeping bag, and he could snuggle down. His foxhole was just big enough for him. He had guard duty and he got to know the mess sergeant. [Annotator's Note: Bertz tells a story that is hard to follow about a fellow soldier back in Kansas.] On 1 January, they were told they were moving into the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. They got on the Red Ball Express [Annotator's Note: Allied forces truck convoy system] and took off for Germany. There were about eight men and the kitchen equipment on their truck. Bertz saw tanks slip sideways because the roads were so slick. They made corduroy roads [Annotator's Note: a road made of tree trunks]. It was rough traveling. In France, the hedgerows were eight to ten feet high and made of rocks and materials and tanks had a hard time getting through. Germans had machine guns along the fields. On guard duty, they had clickers to use for passwords. Germans would string piano wire across the fields. Jeeps would be run with sharpened iron to cut the piano strings.

Richard O. "Otto" Bertz when through the backstreets of Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] on a truck. It was bitter cold, and they [Annotator's Note: Company D, 1st Battalion, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division] drove all night long. The convoy would not stop, and he had to go to the bathroom. He decided to go off the back of the truck. They then went to Obertsdorf, Germany. There were houses on both sides of the road. Bertz was put next to the CP [Annotator's Note: command post]. He went to the second floor and got some sleep. Each German house had an attic where they hung their meats. In the cellar they had wine. There was a cuckoo clock that he wanted to shoot. It was really cold. He did guard duty one night and was in the doorway. The Germans had been infiltrating. He heard something, cocked his carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine], and asked for the password with no response. It was a guy coming up with a bottle of wine. He told him he did not know how close he came to getting shot. The guy was the captain's gofer [Annotator's Note: slang for errand boy]. They relieved the 90th [Annotator's Note: 90th Infantry Division]. One sunny morning, Bertz was looking down in a valley towards the Orscholz Switch at the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s]. He was going to be an ammunition carrier. They left about midnight towards Orscholz [Annotator's Note: Orscholz, Germany. It was bitter cold. The Germans had better shoes than they did. They got to Saarburg [Annotator's Note: Saarburg, Germany] forest near daylight. Bertz was given an ammunition vest. He had white sheets on for camouflage. They went through the minefield. The lieutenant went through with the radioman. He was captured and the radioman was killed by a sniper. Bertz was part way down when the 88s [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] let loose as well as mortars. Some officers were killed. A young kid was in front of Bertz during the battle. They could not see the Schu mines [Annotator's Note: Schü-mine 42, Schützenmine 42, English: rifleman's mine model 1942]. Bertz told the kid to stop and turn around and come back to him. They went back into the woods. Bertz thought they were going to be annihilated. He heard someone yell to withdraw. The next day they took Orscholz [Annotator's Note: 21 February 1945]. Bertz went into the woods where there was a tank and a jeep. He wanted to lay down and go to sleep. He had learned that was the easiest way to die because you fall asleep and then freeze to death. Bertz could hear the crew inside the tank. Screaming mimis [Annotator's Note: nebelwerfer; German multiple rocket launcher] were hitting the trees. Bertz banged on the tank and told them to stop the engines because they were drawing fire. They would not let him in the tank. He stood by a tree through the night. A sergeant fell asleep under the tank. At daylight, the tankers [Annotator's Note: tank crew] came out with an iron bar and had to pry the sergeant out. He was frozen stiff. At daylight, Bertz got out of the forest at Saarburg and found someone who had food. He got some and went back into the village.

Richard O. "Otto" Bertz had never been as cold as he was in combat. He still has trouble with his feet and goes to bed with his socks on. You do not get Purple Hearts [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy] for frozen feet. Bertz never applied for disability. When you are drafted, you just have to go. When you come out and need help, they do not want to help you. He has friends who were in Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] and were affected by Agent Orange [Annotator's Note: a defoliant chemical used by the United States in the Vietnam War]. It was one argument after another to get some help. One friend had jungle fever [Annotator's Note: severe variety of malarial fever] and it took a year to find out what was wrong with him. That should not happen. Congressmen talk a good talk but do not walk the walk. Bertz was always on the move with the 3rd Army with Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. They [Annotator's Note: Company D, 1st Battalion, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division] went into Ludwigshafen [Annotator's Note: Ludwigshafen, Germany]. There was a soap factory there. He saw something on PCP [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] about the war. A woman showed how they made the vents for the crematoriums [Annotator's Note: ovens in the concentration camps] in that town. Bertz went to the factory and looked in the window. A gaunt man was looking at him through the window. They did not speak. Bertz was told to move on. The man was a slave laborer. After the war, someone told Bertz to read a book called "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by Raymond G. Edmond Griffin [Annotator's Note: published in 1994]. The author said there were a lot of people who had high finances on the East Coast [Annotator's Note: of the United States] who had money in that plant. The Air Force never bombed that plant. Bertz feels they paid to keep them safe.

Richard O. "Otto" Bertz and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company D, 1st Battalion, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division] went to Trier [Annotator's Note: Trier, Germany]. It had already been taken. There was a lot of sniper fire in the smaller villages. At one end of Obertsdorf [Annotator's Note: Obertsdorf, Germany], there was a dirt road and there was a big dump pile. Potatoes and turnips were buried in there. They had cows next to the houses, wine in the basement, and meats in the attic. They had good eating while there. They took houses when they could. His captain would take over the nicest place. Some of the places had cabinets full of guns. The captain shipped some of them home. They slept on the floor of some of the castles. They got no opposition from the German populations. There were miles and miles of displaced persons. There were dead, bloated horses lying around. There was not much food. As they were becoming an Army of Occupation, they took over a house that had a garden. The owner polished the stove. She told them that someday that would fight the Russians. That partially came true. Bertz felt sorry for the civilians. Some of the blasted tanks were still steaming from fire. They went into the Ruhr Valley and went into a nice home near the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River, Germany]. He could see the Cologne Cathedral [Annotator's Note: Kölner Dom, a Catholic Cathedral in Cologne or Köln, Germany]. He went into a house and there was a trunk with a German uniform in it. He did not take it, but he took a pistol. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer tells some stories about souvenir taking he has heard.] Bertz was talking to a man in a German village who offered to make him a holster for his pistol. He carried it the rest of the war. He had given him a pack of cigarettes for it. They went to Czechoslovakia and got a brand new sleeping bag. A guy made him a jacket out of it. He wore that when he left there. He had given that man a pack of cigarettes also.

Richard O. "Otto" Bertz was in Czechoslovakia when the war ended. That was not bad duty. They were stuck in a woodland. They put some two by fours [Annotator's Note: two inch by four inch lumber] up among trees and put tarps over them. He found a typewriter and he wrote some letters. Once he made fudge with another guy. Bertz was delayed getting out and it snowed. He took a train in France and it derailed. They could not get the train stopped. They had to hold on. It was only their car, and it was banging along. People stood there and waved as they went through. Bertz took his coat off and helped a guy climb out. The guy got up to the German [Annotator's Note: driving the train] and put his gun to his head. They stopped the train. Three or four Frenchmen with timber and an iron bar lifted the car back on the tracks. They went to Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France]. Bertz had made Staff Sergeant and was designated to collect the gear. The next day he went home on the SS George Washington. [Annotator's Note: There is a tape break at 1:02:44.00 and Bertz comes back mid-sentence talking about a hurricane.] It was bitter cold on 15 December [Annotator's Note: 15 December 1945] and a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] broke in two. The carrier Essex [Annotator's Note: the USS Essex (CV-9)] was on their right. They had no airplanes and only cots. The windows were blown out on the pilot house. They turned around and went back to England. Bertz's ship's propeller broke and they nearly capsized. The whistle stuck open. It was frightening. They were all kept below. They asked for deckhands. They had ropes and lines they attached to the rudder and tied them to the steering wheel. Bertz thought it would all be over in ten minutes. You could not last ten minutes in that water. [Annotator's Note: The clip stops abruptly.]