Elmer, Peter, AHC 1789

SM: Was that difficult for you to go to another country, leave your family and your friends?

PE: Yes, very much so. I…initially, before the Anschluss, I remember being very homesick and writing that I did not like it there. First of all, because [the] English, at that time particularly, were not that favorably inclined towards foreigners. And I was a foreigner, and my English was very poor, if any. And I was really an outcast in a way. I then tried to get together with a few other German or Austrian boys, but that did not make for any popularity with the rest of the English. The only time that it improved is when they found out, that I was a very good tennis player and a very good soccer player, and they could use me on one of their little teams. But I was also quite spoiled in my upbringing. My family was at that time very well-off, we had a very nice house with a big garden in Hietzing, I had sort of a nanny and so I remember when I was brought to England and there you had to get dressed in a school blazer and sometimes you had to wear a tie, I had no idea of putting on a tie. And I found that it was always very cold and the basins, which we had for washing, sometimes froze over and I would write home to them about it. And at that time they said it is good for you to learn all these things and they probably were, but it was…not necessarily a happy time for me.

1/00:16:05

SM: Did the fact that you are Jewish play any role at that point in England with the English kids or the Austrian or German kids?

PE: No. I do not think it was…as far as English were concerned, you were just a foreigner and they did not like that. I also remember the first day I was there, we were at an assembly and somebody spoke and I could not understand what the person was saying and so I looked up and around trying to figure out what was going on. Well, it turned out a little later that there was a chaplain who was saying their morning prayers. And five minutes later I had somebody put the hand on my shoulder. And it was somebody who was called a prefect, he was a student but in an upper echelon. And he said: “You are one of the new foreigners?” I said: “Yes.” And then he said: “Did you know what is going on here?” I said: “No, that is why I looked around.” He says: “Well, this is terrible because you must understand they were saying prayers.” I said: “I did not realize what is going on.” He said: “Well, you come to my office.” And I got caned the first time. Means you pull your pants down and you really got caned as a punishment for what I was doing. And because I never had a caning before, I could not sit down, it was very difficult to go to classes, because it was very painful, so I was the laughing stock of a lot of other kids who were either used to getting caned or whatever…you put a book down there instead. But I got used to it and I got used to a certain amount of discipline, but certainly I was not particularly happy during the first few months that I was there.

PE: […] My grandfather, as I mentioned earlier, has been really the one that had the greatest influence in my life…and he decided when I did not know what I wanted to do, that I should study to become an engineer. I had no qualifications for being an engineer at all. I remember having to take mechanical drawing, that was one of the requirements that you had and I failed it twice. And it was terrible, I could never…before the year was up, I was drafted into the American army. And…I spent four, five months in what is normally basic training and then I volunteered for the ski mountain troops, which was an organization that was just being formed with a lot of…particularly Austrian, German, Swiss, Norwegian skiers because one of the requirements was that you had to be a very good skier to get in there or if you are not a very good skier, you had to be a very good mountain climber and they would then teach you how to ski. So I spent a year and a half in a place called Camp Hale in Colorado, high up at ten thousand feet where we were trained to fight a war, trained to fight on skies, if it should become necessary, learn how to mountain climb. And the idea was to be prepared particularly in case the outfit was going to have to fight against Austrian or German mountain troops who were well trained. We did not have any ski or mountain troops in the United States. And the 10^th Mountain Division was the only outfit and we were all volunteers, not volunteers for the army, but volunteers to go into that outfit.

At the end of our training we were sent to Italy to fight against particularly German or Austrian mountain troops in an area, which was really called a mountain range, which was called the Apennines, which a lot of American forces had tried to cross, and the Germans and Austrians held it with tremendous casualties for American troops. And we came in as sort of the elite who was supposed to be able to do something and we did. After a long time we were able to climb a 3.000 foot cliff where the Germans and Austrians had huge fortifications into the valley, but had no fortifications in their cliff because nobody could climb it. And we managed to bring up over a 1.000 men in the middle of the night – and I was part of that – to…after basic preparations…and we completely surprised the German…and Austrians to the point that we found some of them sleeping. And this was the beginning of the end of that particular…the Germans ended up after a long fight to have to retreat and there was their biggest line of defence. It was pretty bloody, we went out with about 16.000 men, we lost about…about 3.000 men were killed, not just in that one action but also during the combat in Po valley and so on. And about…I would say we had 4.000 or 5.000 wounded, so there were a lot of outfits. I still go once in a while to one of these reunions. It is now 50 years ago or something. I am not actively involved in the Army at this point.

PE: [...] But in…I really had a particular interesting experience in Vienna when I was there during the army days. I give you, if it is not too long, a little example of something that is really amusing in a way: We had four power conferences there, as you know, Russian, German [meint: Amerikaner, Anm. d. Red.], French and English and we would meet once a month to have conferences and the medical team would meet once a month. And, at one time, a Russian colonel came to our office – by that time I recognized already – and we did not have that much contact with them. And as to speak to my Colonel Miles, he spoke to me. And I introduced myself and he says: “Look, I am sorry” – [he] spoke fluent English, perfect English. I said: “Colonel Miles is not available, would you like to tell me what the subject matter is?” – “No, I would care not to tell you that. I only want to speak to Colonel Miles.” – “So I will see if I can make an appointment. Call us back tomorrow morning.” I gave him my card, he called back, I said: “Colonel Miles will see you tomorrow afternoon – under the condition that Mister Elmer was going to be there” – I was Sergeant Elmer – “will be with you at the same time”. Reluctantly he said yes. The reason for all this was: this was the time, 1945, when the American army got penicillin for the first time, which was not available to anybody else. It was basically only supplies enough for GIs who had a problem. So, this colonel came and he had a problem: he had contact with an ill disease and he pleaded…we started talking to him a lot of times, he…we learned a lot about his background: he was an engineer who lived near St. Petersburg. And I got to know him fairly well. And when the colonel decided to make an exception and give him the penicillin, the Russian colonel gave him a card and said: “If you ever have any kind of problem in any way with Russians, call us.” And we ignored that. A week later, I was bringing home a civilian, there was…at that time curfew, you had to be…the civilians in Vienna had to be out of the street at ten o’clock at night. So I had an open jeep and I drove that girl home. And as I was driving in the middle of one of the few places where they had traffic lights, Ringstraße, they…I had a whole bunch of Russians, GIs, jumping onto the open jeep. Not meaning to hurt anybody, but they had their guns and they were firing up in the air, just very happy, obviously drunk. And I could tell that this was not a good time for the girl to be there. I told her to get out, she better…it is better. So I started driving and they started screaming at me: “Kvartira, kvartira!” They lived in a district, which was across the Danube, and I knew exactly where. And as we were driving they started offering me big cans, like gasoline cans, said: “Vodka, Vodka!” And I…you had to…so I started drinking it and it burned my…I do not know, if it was gasoline or it was…it burned me so much that on the next curve I spit it out and they would not have known it. Anyhow, we got to the station where they had guards and we had to stop and they were arguing with their guards, they would like to be driven with the jeep. While they were arguing, I decided: I am not going to wait for them. I jumped into the jeep and took off. I do not know, who fired at me, but they fired onto the wheels of the jeep and the jeep crashed into an apartment house, completely demolished. I was in shock, but nothing really happened to me.

1/01:01:02

Next morning I went over to the Colonel and I said: “I am here without a jeep.” He said: “What happened?” I described it to him, I said: “Let us see what happens.” Called up this colonel, got back to him in about ten minutes, explained that we had an almost new jeep and what did happen. He says: “It may take a couple of days, I will get back to you.” Within two days we had a new American jeep, delivered to us by the Russians. So you see, all kinds of things can happen. And I tried to keep in contact with him but he would talk about everything, about his family, but he would not talk politics or communism or anything like that. He absolutely would not talk about that. So that was…a bit limited as to what we could talk about.

SM: When did you start feeling an American? How did that develop?

PE: I really think I started feeling an American when I was…long before…when I went to high school. First of all I was…because this was such a free, progressive school, I was very much accepted in every way. And it was a school that was not only multi-ethnic – Jewish, not-Jewish, also we had two or three Afro-Americans in our class. So it was very much of a new experience for me. But really on the whole a good experience. And I felt very much American at that time even though I was not an American citizen yet. Very much so, it did not take that long.