(Vonnegut interviews, part 3; from interviews compiled in 1977...)
Interviewer- Do you mind describing your capture by the Germans?
Vonnegut- Gladly. We were in this gully about as deep as a World War I trench. There was snow all around. Somebody said we were probably in Luxembourg. We were out of food.
Interviewer- Who was we?
Vonnegut- Out battalion scouting unit. All six of us and about fifty people wed never met before. The Germans could see us, because they were talking to us through a loudspeaker. They told us our situation was hopeless, and so on. That was when we fixed bayonets. It was nice there for a few minutes.
Interviewer- How so?
Vonnegut- Being a porcupine with all those steel quills. I pitied anyone who had to come in after us.
Interviewer- But they came in anyway?
Vonnegut- No, they sent in 88 millimeter shells instead. The shells burst in the treetops right over our heads. We were showered with splintered steel. Some people got hit. Then the Germans told us again to come out. We didnt yell, Nuts, or anything like that. We said, Okay, and, Take it easy, and so on. When the Germans finally showed themselves, we saw they were wearing white camouflage suits. We didnt have anything like that. We were olive drab. No matter what season it was, we were olive drab.
Interviewer- What did the Germans say?
Vonnegut- They said that the war was all over for us, that we were lucky, that we could now be sure wed live through the war, which was more than they could be sure of. As a matter of fact, they were probably killed or captured by Pattons 3rd Army within the next few days
Interviewer- Did you speak any German?
Vonnegut- I had heard my parents speak it a lot. They hadnt taught me how to do it, since there had been such bitterness in America against all things German during the First World War. I tried a few words I knew on our captors, and they asked me if I was of German ancestry, and I said, Yes. They wanted to know why I was making war against my brothers.
Interviewer- and you said
Vonnegut- I honestly found the question ignorant and comical. My parents had separated me so thoroughly from my Germanic past that my captors might as well have been Bolivians or Tibetans, for all they meant to me.
Interviewer- After your capture, you were shipped to Dresden?
Vonnegut- In the same boxcars that had brought up the troops that captured us- probably in the same boxcars that had delivered Jews and gypsies and Jehovahs Witnesses and so on to the extermination camps. Rolling stock is rolling stock. British Mosquito bombers attacked us at night a few times. I guess they thought we were strategic materials of some kind. They hit a car containing most of the officers from our battalion. Every time I say I hate officers, which I still do fairly frequently, I have to remind myself that practically none of the officers I served under survived
Interviewer- and you finally arrived in Dresden
Vonnegut- In a huge prison camp south of Dresden, first. The privates were separated from the non-coms and officers. Under the Articles of the Geneva Convention, which is a very Edwardian document, privates were required to work for their keep. Everybody else got to languish in prison. As a private, I was shipped to Dresden.
Interviewer- What were your impressions of the city before the bombing?
Vonnegut- The first fancy city Id ever seen. A city full of statues and zoos, like Paris. We were living in a slaughterhouse, in a nice, new cement-block hog barn. They put bunks and straw mattresses in the barn and we went to work every morning as contract labor in a malt syrup factory. The syrup was for pregnant women. The damned sirens would go off and wed hear some other city getting it whump a whumpa whump. We never expected to get it. There were very few air-raid shelters in town, and no war industries, just cigarette factories, hospitals, clarinet factories. Then a siren went off- it was February 13, 1945- and we went down two stories under the pavement into a big meat locker. It was cool there, with cadavers hanging all around. When we came up, the city was gone.
Interviewer- You didnt suffocate in the meat locker?
Vonnegut- No. It was quite large, and there werent very many of us. The attack didnt sound like a hell of a lot, either
Interviewer- What happened when you came up?
Vonnegut- Our guards were non-coms- a sergeant, a corporal, and four privates- and leaderless. Cityless, too, because they were Dresdeners whod been shot up on the front and sent home for easy duty. They kept us at attention for a couple of hours. They didnt know what else to do. Theyd go over and talk to each other. Finally, we trekked across the rubble and they quartered us with some South Africans in a suburb. Every day we walked into the city and dug into basements and shelters to get the corpses out, as a sanitary measure. When we went into them, a typical shelter, an ordinary basement usually, looked like a streetcar full of people whod simultaneously had heart failure. Just people sitting there in their chairs, all dead. A fire storm is an amazing thing. It doesnt occur in nature. Its fed by the tornadoes that occur in the midst of it and there isnt a damned thing to breathe. We brought the dead out. They were loaded onto wagons and taken to parks, any large open areas in the city which werent filled with rubble. The Germans got funeral pyres going, burning the bodies to keep them from stinking and spreading disease. 130,000 corpses were hidden underground. It was a terribly elaborate Easter egg hunt. We went to work through cordons of German soldiers. Civilians didnt get to see what we were up to. After a few days, the city began to smell and a new technique was invented. Necessity is the mother of invention. We would bust into a shelter, gather up valuables from peoples laps without attempting identification, and turn the valuables over to the guards. Then soldiers would come in with a flame thrower and stand in the door and cremate the people inside. Get the gold and the jewelry and then burn everybody inside.
Interviewer- What an impression on someone thinking of becoming a writer1
Vonnegut- It was a fancy thing to see, a startling thing. It was a moment of truth, too, because American civilians and ground troops didnt know American bombers were engaged in saturation bombing. It was kept a secret until very close to the end of the war. One reason they burned down Dresden is that theyd already burned down everything else. You know- What are we going to do tonight? Here was everybody all set to go, and Germany still fighting, and this machinery for burning down cities was being used. It was a secret, burning down cities; boiling pisspots and flaming prams. There was all this hokum about the Norden bombsight. Youd see a newsreel showing a bombardier with an MP on either side of him holding drawn .45s [to guard bombing-mission documents] that sort of nonsense, and hell, all they were doing was just flying over cities, hundreds of airplanes, and dropping everything.
When I went to the University of Chicago after the war, the guy who interviewed me for admission had bombed Dresden. He got to that part of my life story and said, Well, we hated to do it. The comment sticks in my mind.
Interviewer- Another reaction would be, We were ordered to do it.
Vonnegut- His was more humane. I think he felt the bombing was necessary, and it may have been. One thing everybody learned is how fast you can rebuild a city. The engineers said it would take 500 years to rebuild Germany. Actually, it took about 18 weeks.
Interviewer- Do you mind describing your capture by the Germans?
Vonnegut- Gladly. We were in this gully about as deep as a World War I trench. There was snow all around. Somebody said we were probably in Luxembourg. We were out of food.
Interviewer- Who was we?
Vonnegut- Out battalion scouting unit. All six of us and about fifty people wed never met before. The Germans could see us, because they were talking to us through a loudspeaker. They told us our situation was hopeless, and so on. That was when we fixed bayonets. It was nice there for a few minutes.
Interviewer- How so?
Vonnegut- Being a porcupine with all those steel quills. I pitied anyone who had to come in after us.
Interviewer- But they came in anyway?
Vonnegut- No, they sent in 88 millimeter shells instead. The shells burst in the treetops right over our heads. We were showered with splintered steel. Some people got hit. Then the Germans told us again to come out. We didnt yell, Nuts, or anything like that. We said, Okay, and, Take it easy, and so on. When the Germans finally showed themselves, we saw they were wearing white camouflage suits. We didnt have anything like that. We were olive drab. No matter what season it was, we were olive drab.
Interviewer- What did the Germans say?
Vonnegut- They said that the war was all over for us, that we were lucky, that we could now be sure wed live through the war, which was more than they could be sure of. As a matter of fact, they were probably killed or captured by Pattons 3rd Army within the next few days
Interviewer- Did you speak any German?
Vonnegut- I had heard my parents speak it a lot. They hadnt taught me how to do it, since there had been such bitterness in America against all things German during the First World War. I tried a few words I knew on our captors, and they asked me if I was of German ancestry, and I said, Yes. They wanted to know why I was making war against my brothers.
Interviewer- and you said
Vonnegut- I honestly found the question ignorant and comical. My parents had separated me so thoroughly from my Germanic past that my captors might as well have been Bolivians or Tibetans, for all they meant to me.
Interviewer- After your capture, you were shipped to Dresden?
Vonnegut- In the same boxcars that had brought up the troops that captured us- probably in the same boxcars that had delivered Jews and gypsies and Jehovahs Witnesses and so on to the extermination camps. Rolling stock is rolling stock. British Mosquito bombers attacked us at night a few times. I guess they thought we were strategic materials of some kind. They hit a car containing most of the officers from our battalion. Every time I say I hate officers, which I still do fairly frequently, I have to remind myself that practically none of the officers I served under survived
Interviewer- and you finally arrived in Dresden
Vonnegut- In a huge prison camp south of Dresden, first. The privates were separated from the non-coms and officers. Under the Articles of the Geneva Convention, which is a very Edwardian document, privates were required to work for their keep. Everybody else got to languish in prison. As a private, I was shipped to Dresden.
Interviewer- What were your impressions of the city before the bombing?
Vonnegut- The first fancy city Id ever seen. A city full of statues and zoos, like Paris. We were living in a slaughterhouse, in a nice, new cement-block hog barn. They put bunks and straw mattresses in the barn and we went to work every morning as contract labor in a malt syrup factory. The syrup was for pregnant women. The damned sirens would go off and wed hear some other city getting it whump a whumpa whump. We never expected to get it. There were very few air-raid shelters in town, and no war industries, just cigarette factories, hospitals, clarinet factories. Then a siren went off- it was February 13, 1945- and we went down two stories under the pavement into a big meat locker. It was cool there, with cadavers hanging all around. When we came up, the city was gone.
Interviewer- You didnt suffocate in the meat locker?
Vonnegut- No. It was quite large, and there werent very many of us. The attack didnt sound like a hell of a lot, either
Interviewer- What happened when you came up?
Vonnegut- Our guards were non-coms- a sergeant, a corporal, and four privates- and leaderless. Cityless, too, because they were Dresdeners whod been shot up on the front and sent home for easy duty. They kept us at attention for a couple of hours. They didnt know what else to do. Theyd go over and talk to each other. Finally, we trekked across the rubble and they quartered us with some South Africans in a suburb. Every day we walked into the city and dug into basements and shelters to get the corpses out, as a sanitary measure. When we went into them, a typical shelter, an ordinary basement usually, looked like a streetcar full of people whod simultaneously had heart failure. Just people sitting there in their chairs, all dead. A fire storm is an amazing thing. It doesnt occur in nature. Its fed by the tornadoes that occur in the midst of it and there isnt a damned thing to breathe. We brought the dead out. They were loaded onto wagons and taken to parks, any large open areas in the city which werent filled with rubble. The Germans got funeral pyres going, burning the bodies to keep them from stinking and spreading disease. 130,000 corpses were hidden underground. It was a terribly elaborate Easter egg hunt. We went to work through cordons of German soldiers. Civilians didnt get to see what we were up to. After a few days, the city began to smell and a new technique was invented. Necessity is the mother of invention. We would bust into a shelter, gather up valuables from peoples laps without attempting identification, and turn the valuables over to the guards. Then soldiers would come in with a flame thrower and stand in the door and cremate the people inside. Get the gold and the jewelry and then burn everybody inside.
Interviewer- What an impression on someone thinking of becoming a writer1
Vonnegut- It was a fancy thing to see, a startling thing. It was a moment of truth, too, because American civilians and ground troops didnt know American bombers were engaged in saturation bombing. It was kept a secret until very close to the end of the war. One reason they burned down Dresden is that theyd already burned down everything else. You know- What are we going to do tonight? Here was everybody all set to go, and Germany still fighting, and this machinery for burning down cities was being used. It was a secret, burning down cities; boiling pisspots and flaming prams. There was all this hokum about the Norden bombsight. Youd see a newsreel showing a bombardier with an MP on either side of him holding drawn .45s [to guard bombing-mission documents] that sort of nonsense, and hell, all they were doing was just flying over cities, hundreds of airplanes, and dropping everything.
When I went to the University of Chicago after the war, the guy who interviewed me for admission had bombed Dresden. He got to that part of my life story and said, Well, we hated to do it. The comment sticks in my mind.
Interviewer- Another reaction would be, We were ordered to do it.
Vonnegut- His was more humane. I think he felt the bombing was necessary, and it may have been. One thing everybody learned is how fast you can rebuild a city. The engineers said it would take 500 years to rebuild Germany. Actually, it took about 18 weeks.
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
Ouch indeed, though I'm all but entirely healed... physically and psychically.
It was the first song of theirs I heard and it is what made me a huge Lush fan. The video was so cool, at least it was to me.