Seymour Mermelstein was born October 1924 in Newark, New Jersey. He was the oldest of three children born to Jewish immigrants from the border region of Austria and Hungary. His father was a contractor and a master craftsman. Until 1932 he was doing quite well, but then he got cancer and lost everything. Everybody was in the same category during the Depression and everything was sort of normal. Mermelstein was working in a grocery store when he heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese. He had no idea where that was, but he knew the country was at war. He was in his last year of high school. He wanted to join the Marines but his parents begged him to finish high school. After graduating in June 1942, he went to an agricultural school outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that was training young Jewish men to work on a kibbutz [Annotator's Note: a collective community in Israel, typically a farm] in Israel. He was not religious, but he enjoyed farming. He had turned 18 in October and registered for the draft on 24 December 1942. He was called up in January 1943 and by 16 March he was in the US Army at Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Trenton, New Jersey]. His father had told him that they [Annotator's Note: the Army] would put him where they wanted him. He was assigned to the Army Air Corps and went to basic training in Miami Beach, Florida [Annotator's Note: Miami Beach Wartime Training Center].

Seymour Mermelstein attended basic training in Miami Beach, Florida. He was then sent to automotive school. He went to Fort Stewart, Georgia and had finished ten of 12 weeks of training when he was pulled to go to Clemson University in South Carolina to Army ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program]. From there he was sent to Boston College in Massachusetts. His sister passed away while he was there. He could not continue his studies and wanted to leave. A Jesuit Priest there asked him if it was because he was Jewish in a Catholic school. He said it had nothing to do with that, but that he wanted to go to paratrooper school instead. He got himself washed out of the college. He then went to Shenango, Pennsylvania [Annotator's Note: Camp Reynolds, Transfer, Pennsylvania] which was training for POE [Annotator’s Note: Port of Embarkation]. A sergeant asked him questions about his training in Miami Beach and he did not know the answers, so he was sent back to basic training in Aberdeen, Maryland. He moved around more, ultimately ending up at Camp Patrick Henry [Annotator's Note: now Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport in Warwick, Virginia]. At one point there were only 200 men in the camp with no officer. He got a three-day pass and spent the time with his family. After he returned, he was shipped to Oran, Algeria, in North Africa in early 1944. He still had no idea of what his job was. He had guard duty and KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] for about five weeks and he did not like it. He went down to Camp Ciano [Annotator's Note: named for Gian Galeazzo Ciano, 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari], Italy, Mussolini's [Annotator's Note: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini] son-in-law's farm. He saw a notice for volunteers for a combat unit, so he signed up. He went to Santa Maria, Italy and trained for the invasion of Southern France while his new unit [Annotator's Note: 1st Special Service Force] was at Anzio. They were to be the replacements for the expected casualties for the invasion. Mermelstein joined the unit with other replacements in Southern France and stayed with it until it was disbanded. As the need for replacements grew within the Canadian Army, the decision was made to take them from the unit [Annotator's Note: 1st Special Service Force]. After the unit was disbanded, Mermelstein and the remaining American troops went to Barneville, France in the Cherbourg peninsula. There, the 99th Norwegian-American Battalion joined them after coming back from the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. These all combined into the 474th Infantry Regiment (Separate) and they did more training. They were then headed to Germany and were rounding up saboteurs and deserters from the German Army when they discovered the gold in the salt mine in Merkers [Annotator's Note: Merkers-Kieselbach, Germany; large amounts of Nazi gold and stolen works of art were stored in salt mines]. They were then assigned guard duty and escorted the gold to Frankfurt, Germany.

Seymour Mermelstein was in Kassel, Germany on 12 April 1945 when President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt] died. He went to Buchenwald [Annotator's Note: Buchenwald concentration camp, Weimar, Germany] within the first three or four days of it being liberated. He was invited back in 2009 for the 65th Anniversary. The Buchenwald Foundation [Annotator's Note: Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Weimar, Germany] considers anybody who was in the camp the first week, liberators. He took very many pictures when he was in the camp and some of his images are in the Holocaust Museum [Annotator's Note: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.]. The Jewish War Veterans [Annotator's Note: Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America] have some of his images as well. He had received the camera he used at his Bar Mitzvah [Annotator's Note: Jewish coming of age ritual for boys at the age of 13] and he has donated it to the Buchenwald Foundation. He has the actual negatives to dispute any Holocaust deniers.

Seymour Mermelstein was a member of the 1st Special Service Force [Annotator's Note: also referred to as "the Force"], a joint unit of Canadian and American soldiers under one command. They were armed very differently from other units. Colonel Fredericks [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Robert T. Frederick] had started the unit. They had intensive training for Kiska and afterward, more than conventional units. They also had much more firepower than conventional units. Their descendants are the Green Berets [Annotator's Note: United States Army Special Forces] and the CSOR [Annotator’s Note: Special Operations Regiment, Canadian Special Operations Command] regiments in Canadian Special Forces. At reunions of the groups, they talk about how entire families were at war together in the 1940s and it is not that way today. He does not understand the adulation of their unit now. They just did their jobs. Mermelstein was trained as a rifleman but carried the Thompson [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun], the M3 [Annotator's Note: United States Submachine Gun, .45 caliber, M3, also called the Grease Gun or the Greaser], the BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle], and the Johnson automatic rifle [Annotator's Note: M1941 Johnson Light Machine Gun] which was used by the US Marine Corps. He did not like the ammo clips for the Johnson as opposed to the BAR which had belts of ammunition. Which gun he carried depended on what the situation was. He describes a picture of himself in a book called the "First Airborne Task Force" [Annotator's Note: First Airborne Task Force: Pictorial History of the Allied Paratroopers in the Invasion of Southern France, Michel de Trez, 1998], which he calls his 15 minutes of fame. [Annotator's Note: A roughly ten second clip of the interview is removed at the request of the interviewee.] Mermelstein says that they were the most highly trained combat unit at that time. Most of their missions were at night. They assaulted Monte la Difensa, Italy [Annotator's Note: also called Hill 960; Battle for Monte La Difensa, 3 to 9 December 1943]. Three other units had all tried to take the mountain for six weeks. The Force went in at night up a steep, 300 foot cliff and took it in two hours. At Anzio, Italy the perimeter was 56 miles and the Force had one quarter of that with 1,800 men. The Germans gave the name the "Schwarzen Teufel," "Black Devils," to them there. Fredericks had the idea of putting the unit insignia, an arrowhead with USA and CANADA on it, on stickers on buildings, on German dead bodies, and more. This confused the Germans as to what the unit really was, but they knew they were deadly. In Italy, his group went into some limestone quarries and did rope training. They only had a single rope with no safety equipment. One of the officers slipped and the rope caught his ankle. He was hanging by his ankle, 90 feet off the ground. Some of them did airborne training but Mermelstein did not qualify for it. Most of their training was in physical conditioning.

Seymour Mermelstein has gone back to Italy twice, and he cannot believe how large the mountains are viewing them now. The local people gave them a tremendous welcome. One trip was provided by The Greatest Generation Foundation out of Denver, Colorado. He was flown to Paris, France and then to Toulon, France by private jet to the Charles de Gaulle [Annotator's Note: French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle; flagship of the French Navy (Marine Nationale)]. Dignitaries from 15 different countries attended, as well as all kinds of naval vessels and French Mirage [Annotator's Note: Dassault Aviation Mirage jet fighter aircraft] aircraft. They enjoyed dinner and fireworks.

Seymour Mermelstein and the 1st Special Service Force [Annotator's Note: Mermelstein was a member of 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Special Service Force] went into Southern France aboard Ducks [Annotator's Note: DUKW, six-wheel-drive amphibious truck] and then went overland to Drap, France on trucks. He returned to Port-Cros, France later in life, where he saw the plaque at the spot where his unit had landed before he arrived. This was the first time he knew the names of the men he had been sent to replace and it really hit home. His unit came into France as one force and were then split up into three different regiments as replacements. [Annotator's Note: He describes the order of battle for the unit.] Each section had a 60mm mortar, a BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle], a Johnson [Annotator's Note: M1941 Johnson Light Machine Gun], and a machine gun. They had enormous firepower. Mermelstein was made a BAR man because he was physically large enough to carry it. Their companies were smaller than standard infantry companies. They were intermixed with Canadian soldiers under one command. All wore American uniforms. The force used some of the Canadian battle tactics. This was the only integrated unit until 2001 in Afghanistan. He recalls they had 1,800 combat men and 600 supply personnel, who could also be combat soldiers. Their casualty rate was very high. In July 2013 the unit received the Congressional Gold Medal Congressional Gold Medal [Annotator's Note: highest award bestowed by the United States Congress]. They never received the Presidential Unit Citation [Annotator's Note: originally called the Distinguished Unit Citation, the Presidential Unit Citation or PUC is awarded to military units for extraordinary heroism, on or after 7 December 1941]. General Clark [Annotator's Note: US Army general Mark Wayne Clark] wanted to award it to the 2nd Regiment but Frederick [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Robert T. Frederick] said that it should be awarded to all three regiments or not at all. Clark would not approve it.

Seymour Mermelstein had no idea of how the Jews were being treated by the Nazis. He did know through relatives of his that they were having a hard time. His father and his uncle were the only two of five brothers who lived in America. As a young kid, politics did not concern him. That changed when he went in the concentration camps. After seven decades he has changed. He went back to Buchenwald [Annotator's Note: Buchenwald concentration camp, Weimar, Germany] in 2009 as a courtesy of the Buchenwald Foundation, the mayor of Weimar, Germany told him that tolerance is now taught in German schools. The Germans own up to what they did. He changed his thinking of Germans then, but he still refuses to meet German World War 2 veterans and he will not visit German cemeteries of the era. Up until he saw the camps firsthand, the Germans were just the enemy. After seeing the camps, he had no use for them whatsoever. He visited Rome, Italy recently and was in the Ardeatine Caves, where the Germans killed 336 people [Annotator's Note: the Ardeatine Massacre, or Fosse Ardeatine Massacre, was a mass killing in Rome, Italy on 22 March 1944 by German occupation troops], and the curator said that they forgave the French Goums [Annotator's Note: Moroccan Goumier (French: Les Goumiers Marocains), indigenous Moroccan soldier auxiliary units of French Army of Africa, 1809 to 1956] who raped and pillaged because that was their culture. [Annotator's Note: Marocchinate, Italian: "Moroccan deeds"; estimates range from 800 to 60,000, women, men, and children raped and killed. Fifteen soldiers were executed and 54 ordered to hard labor in military prisons.] But they also said that because the Germans were methodical and educated, they could not be forgiven. The Germans kept records of their deeds. He was in Dachau and saw the detailed records that included ages, birth dates, and more.

Seymour Mermelstein was on night patrols most of the time and says they are all pretty much the same. He went out on one patrol where they were going up a switchback trail when they heard a shot. One of the men on patrol said he saw a head pop up and shot at it. Unfortunately, it was the platoon commander [Annotator's Note: US Army Second Lieutenant Kenneth D. McDougall; killed 14 September 1944] and he had killed him. Some years later, a woman who was writing a book [Annotator's Note: "Kenneth" by Susan Lentz, AuthorHouse 2007] about the platoon commander called Mermelstein and asked how he had died. He was not going to tell her because he did not know her. He finally did tell her after they had talked a bit further. He also told her that he was one of the men who went back and retrieved the body. Mermelstein recently visited the Draguignan Cemetery, Rhone [Annotator's Note: Rhone American Cemetery, Draguignan, France] where McDougall is buried. [Annotator's Note: Mermelstein describes the scene in detail.] The 1st Special Service Force guarded the border at the French Riviera for about five weeks. They were holding back the German forces to help the different assaults in the invasion of Germany to proceed without reinforcements. Cannes, Grasse, Drap, and Peille, France were all big fights. The mountain peaks around the towns were also big battles as they formed part of the Maginot Line [Annotator's Note: concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapons installations built by France in 1930s and named after French Minister of War André Maginot]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Mermelstein to tell of some of the battles.] Mermelstein says that there is not much to tell other than they just kept moving forward and shooting at Germans. He did not find any of the battles to be worse than the others. As soon as somebody shoots at you, it is bad. He feels that after all of the battles they had taken part in in Italy and with all of the casualties they had taken, they were pretty happy to just sit and guard the border.

Seymour Mermelstein encountered civilians in some of the small towns they went through. [Annotator's Note: Mermelstein was a member of 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Special Service Force.] He saw some of these people on his returns to Europe later and they could not thank him enough. He says that at the time, he did not think of himself as a liberator. When 1st Special Service Force was disbanded, the Canadian soldiers were ordered to step out of ranks. When the order "close ranks" was given to the American soldiers, they refused to do so and left the empty spaces where the Canadian soldiers had stood. In 2006, this scene was reenacted in Montana at one of the reunions of the group. Mermelstein had never seen so many grown men cry as when the unit was disbanded, and the Canadians were moved out. Some of the Americans were sent to either the 82nd Airborne Division or 101st Airborne Division. Mermelstein went with a group of Forcemen to Normandy where they were regrouped as the 474th Infantry Regiment (Separate). He was assigned to Company B [Annotator's Note: Company B, 1st Battalion, 474th Infantry Regiment (Separate)]. He was tasked with rounding up what were called werewolves [Annotator's Note: 1944 Nazi plan to create a resistance force operating behind Allied lines in Germany], Germans who had been left behind or deserted, looted contraband, and more. Mermelstein looted a watch himself once. A woman came running after him and he turned it in. It was the only thing he wanted. There were US Army Rangers who joined their unit as well. He had gone to Buchenwald [Annotator's Note: Buchenwald concentration camp, Weimar, Germany] on 13 April 1945, the day after Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] died. They found some German grenades and blew them up in the river for fun.

The disbanded 1st Special Service Force [Annotator's Note: also referred to as "the Force"] were spread all over Germany. Seymour Mermelstein said the countryside was beautiful but there was utter devastation in all of the cities. He felt the Germans had gotten what they deserved. He does not remember where he was or how he heard that the Germans had surrendered but only thought that they would then be off to fight the Japanese. Mermelstein did not look forward to it, but it had to be done. He feels they would have done well against the Japanese even though they had not had jungle training. The Force had gone in at Kiska but there were no Japanese soldiers there. Mermelstein went to Norway after the Germans surrendered. He went onboard an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. He really liked being on duty there. The Norwegians wanted nothing to do with soldiers at first, but the Americans grew on them and some even got married to soldiers. He was in Oslo and the unit [Annotator's Note: Company B, 1st Battalion, 474th Infantry Regiment (Separate)] welcomed King Haakon VII [Annotator's Note: Haakon VII, born Prince Carl of Denmark, King of Norway from 1905 to 1957] back to Norway. They stood honor guard for him at the palace. Admiral Stark [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark] and General Bradley [Annotator's Note: US Army General Omar Nelson Bradley] attended. Mermelstein and his unit were rounding up the Germans, delousing them and sending them back to Germany. He recalls that in Southern France he went into Nice where they had shaved the hair off women who had been with German soldiers. He did not witness anything like that in Oslo. Mermelstein was in Norway from June to 15 October 1945. He left Norway and came back to New York City and was discharged 1 November 1945 at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

After the Germans surrendered, Seymour Mermelstein was part of rounding them up to send back to Germany. [Annotator's Note: Mermelstein served as a member of 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Special Service Force until that unit was disbanded in December 1944. He was then assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 474th Infantry Regiment (Separate) and served on occupation duty in Norway with that unit.] He was disgusted by them. He vaguely recalls hearing of the atomic bombs being dropped but remembers more hearing that the Japanese had surrendered. The trip back across the Atlantic on the SS Dominican Victory was very rough. They were concerned the ship would sink at one point. When they arrived in New York Harbor, they received a great welcome. When he had boarded the ship in Norway, he had 20 dollars in his pocket. He won 400 dollars gambling on the ship but ended up gambling it all away. He got off the ship without a penny. When he first got home, his father just stood at the door in shock, but his dog jumped on him right away. They had not known he was coming home. He had not been good at writing home and had been ordered to write a letter home once when the Red Cross delivered a complaint from his family to his commander. He had been an acting sergeant in Norway but to keep the rank he would have had to serve three more years. He did not want to do that, so he was discharged as a Private First Class. He was just ready to go home. With foresight, he believes he would have stayed in.

Seymour Mermelstein went to Bluefield Junior College in West Virginia for two years and then Rider College in Trenton, New Jersey on the G.I. Bill. In his first year after getting home, he did not do anything other than make up for missing his teenage years. He went to work for the Royal Typewriter Company selling supplies after college. Mermelstein did not really have too bad a time with his memories. Whether it is overt or submerged, most soldiers have PTSD [Annotator's Note post traumatic stress disorder]. It is not something that happens over and entire 24 hour day though. He did spend time in New Orleans, Louisiana with a guy who he thinks is a mercenary and has PTSD. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer tells of a friend who is a paid mercenary]. Mermelstein feels he had some trouble transitioning to civilian life, but mostly in using foul language or being jumpy around loud noises. After about year it got easier and school helped as well. Going into Buchenwald [Annotator's Note: Buchenwald concentration camp, Weimar, Germany] is still his most memorable experience. What he saw and smelled, how can man do this to man? He gets emotional. He says it is really indescribable. He went to Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp; Dachau, Germany] later and met a survivor who was from Hungary. Mermelstein says he fought because he was drafted. He did volunteer for the 1st Special Service Force though. He is not certain the war truly changed his life. He went to school, went to work, got married and raised a family. He would have done that anyway. He did change what he studied but the life itself would have been the same overall. He finds it every hard to understand the mindset of the younger generation in revering his generation. He did his patriotic duty and that is all. Everybody was in the war and particularly so after Pearl Harbor. He feels the war means very little to America today and that the average American knows very little about the war. This is where the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana] and other foundations are doing a good job educating but it needs to be taught more in the public schools like they do in Europe. There was a middle-class America back then and there was poverty and a lot of hardship. The Museum is telling the stories of the character of these people.