Robert Bassemir was born in May 1924 in Ridgewood, New York. He grew up with a brother and a sister. His brother served as a hospital technician in England during the war. Bassemir was the youngest child in the family. His family moved in 1929, when they bought a home that he inherited. His father was a leather book binder in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. Bassemir does not know if he served in World War 1. He died at an early age. His mother stayed at home with Bassemir. His brother was an insurance broker in New York City. His mother did not have an education and the family barely got by. Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] was president during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945]. World War 2 made it possible for the country to rebound from the Depression and allowed Bassemir to go to college. He graduated in 1949 as a chemical engineer, two years before he went into the Army. He took night courses, so he had two years of engineering experience. He was deferred [Annotator's Note: postponement of military service] for two years while he made camouflage paint. Bassemir was listening to the radio in his house when the news of the Pearl Harbor attack [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] broke. He did not know where the base was. His brother was drafted a year later and was put into the medical corps. He ran a ward in a combat hospital in England. Bassemir was not compelled to join the military. He was still in high school and worked technical jobs, which gave him deferments. After the war, he became the chief scientist at one of the companies. He was not drafted until mid-1943.

Robert Bassemir was drafted in the spring of 1943. He was sent to Long Island [Annotator's Note: Long Island, New York], but then he was shipped to Camp Croft, near Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was hot and full of bugs. His training was tough there. He was then chosen for the Army Special Training Program, or ASTP, because of his college experiences. Bassemir was sent to the University of Delaware [Annotator' Note: located in Newark, Delaware], where he remained for nine months. He learned navigation and surveying. Part of his group was going to be sent to the Air Force and the other part was going to the artillery, however, everyone was sent to the infantry. The Army needed men for the D-Day invasion [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], so he was sent to train in the 104th Division [Annotator's Note: 104th Infantry Division] in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The unit was founded in Oregon but moved to Colorado for intense training. Bassemir was sent to the 415th Regiment, I Company [Annotator's Note: Company I, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division]. He trained for four months in the area. His commander was Terry Allen [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen Senior]. He was tough, but a great officer. The unit was trained for night fighting. Terry Allen believed in fighting at night because that is when the most casualties would occur. They would train at midnight in the desert. It was excellent training, and the division suffered light casualties. They became so used to fighting at night that they did not want to fight in the daytime. Two of the major battles Bassemir fought in were at midnight. After training in Colorado, D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] happened and he was sent to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, where they were trained in embarkation techniques including swimming and climbing cargo nets. Bassemir met General Petraeus [Annotator's Note: US Army General David H. Petraeus] at The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and was given a challenge coin. He took a troop ship to Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France], which had already been captured. [Annotator's Note: Bassemir shows interviewer his medals.] Bassemir's unit received the Presidential Unit Citation [Annotator's Note: PUC, originally called Distinguished Unit Citation, awarded to military units for extraordinary heroism, on or after 7 December 1941]. Once in France, his unit stood guard at an oil field, and then were sent to Holland. That is where he experienced combat for the first time.

Robert Bassemir was in a large battle for the first time. After a couple of weeks, the men [Annotator's Note: Company I, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division] started to understand combat. They captured many of the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] men who were trying to defend Antwerp [Annotator's Note: Antwerp, Belgium]. The Battle of the Dykes [Annotator's Note: also called Battle of the Scheldt, 2 October to 8 November 1944, northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands] was big and the 104th Infantry Division was one of the units that helped to win it. Bassemir's first job was as a scout, which was a bad job. He never rose above the rank of PFC [Annotator's Note: private first class]. His company was in the 3rd Battalion. During the fight for Holland [Annotator's Note: an area of the Netherlands], he fought in the Canadian Army [Annotator's Note: First Canadian Army]. Afterwards, Bassemir was trucked to the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] in Germany. It was a defensive line full of pillboxes [Annotator's Note: type of blockhouse, or concrete, reinforced, dug-in guard post, normally equipped with slits for firing guns]. On the other side of the line was Stolberg [Annotator's Note: Stolberg, Germany], a large industrial city. His unit was told to capture part of the city. While walking in the street, a German shot a panzerfaust [Annotator's Note: a single shot, recoilless German anti-tank weapon] at him. The explosive landed several feet away from him, but he had shrapnel wounds. Some shrapnel cut his helmet buckle. The two scouts turned to go back and ran to a courtyard. The tripped a line and set off a bouncing-betty [Annotator's Note: German S-mine, Schrapnellmine, Springmine or Splittermine], but they heard it. They ducked and took shrapnel in the behind. Bassemir was sent to a field hospital in the rear. He remained there for a week as they pulled shrapnel out of him. When Bassemir was able to walk, he was sent back to the line. He could speak some German and his captain made him an interpreter and radioman in the headquarters company. He remained with the company headquarters for the rest of the war. The only disadvantage to the job was that he had to go on all the patrols. Bassemir was not wounded again for the rest of the war. The patrols were worse than regular duty. They were always at night. He crossed a river looking for prisoners. There would be about 10 people on the patrol, and they would usually capture some Germans. Bassemir would talk the Germans into surrendering. They would then interrogate the German prisoners.

Robert Bassemir fought in a big battle at mountain town called Lucherberg [Annotator's Note: Lucherberg, Germany with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division]. The Germans wanted to keep the high ground and the Americans wanted it for its view of the Rhineland [Annotator's Note: a strip of German land that borders France, Belgium, and the Netherlands]. Bassemir's company was assigned to be the assault unit. His platoon crossed the river at midnight. The other side of the river had a factory on the top of a hill. The Germans did not expect the Americans to assault that part of the river because of how difficult it would be. They crossed a down bridge and were never seen by the enemy. While laying down next to the company commander, the officer told the men they would have to move, or they would die. He started crawling up the hill and the men followed. The Germans heard them and started firing their machine guns. Bassemir had been trained in that situation and he started crawling under the machine gun fire. Not many men were hit by the firing. Once in the town, the situation became chaotic. The Americans decided the town church was the headquarters. Eventually most of the company entered the town. A truce was called at the church for an exchange of the wounded. The company commander had been wounded badly in the battle. Some of the German officers tried to renege on the truce. Some other Germans started trying to capture the unarmed Americans. About 20 Americans were captured, including Bassemir. A German tried to shoot a captured American officer, but Bassemir knocked the rifle out of the man's hand. During the confusion, Bassemir and another man grabbed rifles and ran off into the town. When he got back to the front of the town, Bassemir did not know where the American lines were. He made it down the hill to battalion headquarters. The battle lasted four days. At headquarters, he told the battalion commander, a later governor of New York, about where units were located. The wounded company commander died but received the Silver Star [Annotator's Note: the Silver Star Medal is the third-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy] for his charge up the hill. The battalion commander sent reinforcements up the other road, and the town was captured. The 3rd Battalion received praise for their part of the battle. Bassemir saw a Tiger Tank [Annotator's Note: German Mark VI main battle tank; known as the Tiger] during that battle. He thought it was an amazing tank. An American with a bazooka [Annotator's Note: man-portable recoilless 2.36-inch anti-tank rocket launcher weapon] tried to kill the tank, but the bazooka rounds did nothing to the vehicle. They managed to escape the tank. After that battle, Bassemir's unit captured Cologne [Annotator's Note: Köln (Cologne), Germany] and crossed the Rhine River at Remagen [Annotator's Note: Remagen, Germany].

When Robert Bassemir arrived at Cologne [Annotator's Note: Köln (Cologne), Germany with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division], he was given a two-week pass [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in England. He crossed the English Channel and watched depth bombs [Annotator's Note: also called a depth charge; an anti-submarine explosive munition resembling a metal barrel or drum] being dropped. He stayed with his brother in England. The mess sergeant made Bassemir a steak and egg dinner. When he returned to the front, his unit was in Halle [Annotator's Note: Halle, Germany]. Bassemir met the Russians at Torgau [Annotator's Note: Torgau, Germany]. He thought they were a wild bunch of people. His unit liberated Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp [Annotator's Note: in Nordhausen, Germany]. It was mostly a slave labor camp used to build V-1 [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug] and V-2 rockets [Annotator's Note: German Vergeltungswaffe 2, or Retribution Weapon 2, ballistic missile]. It was in a mountain, making it bomb proof. Bassemir saw many Polish men and women there. They were angry at the Germans for how they were treated. They attacked the former guards. The camp was used for slave labor, not extermination. He left Europe in June or July 1945. He arrived in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and was sent to California for embarkation to Japan. The atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] was dropped and Bassemir did not have to go to the Pacific. He used to visit San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] every day. He was shipped to Fort Douglas, in Salt Lake City, Utah and was discharged in December [Annotator's Note: December 1945]. Bassemir eventually went back to college and finished his degree. He used the GI 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 his schooling and graduated in 1949 as a chemical engineer. His prewar job hired him back and he worked as an engineer. Eventually, he became the manager of their research department, and then worked as their chief scientist. He created 18 patented inventions for the company. Bassemir finally retired when he turned 80 years old.

Robert Bassemir thinks the war was a big life experience for him. He fought for his country and learned how easily he could be killed. He read that most military leaders know they cannot get people much older than 20 years old to go fight and die as easily. Bassemir's most memorable experiences were being wounded and a large battle at Lucherberg [Annotator's Note: Lucherberg, Germany]. He can remember crossing the river and his company commander leading the men up the hill. He does not think half the people there would have followed anyone else but that commander. Bassemir does not think half of the young people know anything about the war. He thinks older people think it might be a larger version of Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War 25 June 1950 through 27 July 1953] or Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975]. He does not think women want to think about war. He believes war is inevitable because of evil people in the world. He is an avid supporter of term limits for politicians because of evil people in politics. Bassemir thinks people should understand the significance of World War 2. Three dictators were intent on dominating the world and it could not be let to happen. He thinks young people should go to Germany and view the remnants of the war there. He has been back to Germany a couple of times and visited war memorials. He was in Germany when it was separated. He thinks young people should understand history, so they do not make the same mistakes.