Serving in World War II left lasting impressions on Clear Lake resident Gerald “Gary” Schuldt. Although the daily rigors of war have faded over time, some events remain as vivid as the day they occurred. 

 

Schuldt was drafted into World War II in 1943. After training at Fort Bliss, TX, he sailed on a ship to Europe, docking in England. 

 

Arriving there, he couldn’t figure out what the lights in the night sky were from, and decided it was probably strong lightning. He soon found out it was German rockets.

 

Schuldt started out stationed in Brussels, Belgium, in the First United States Army, then was transferred to the Third Army and then again to the Seventh Army, serving under General George Patton and ending up in Heidelberg, Germany. 

 

General Patton moved his troops across Germany so quickly they almost starved to death. Supplies couldn’t keep up to them, and often they were stuck in the rain and snow.

 

Once they arrived in Heidelberg, food was still scarce, however Schuldt remembers all the houses had canned pickled eggs in them. He and some of his fellow servicemen decided to get some M1 rifles and try to shoot an elk just so they had something to eat. 

 

Throughout the war he rode mostly in jeeps, and shot submachine guns and M1 rifles. He was stationed with a bunch of seasoned GIs who he said didn’t care much for the younger soldiers, always giving them the dirty jobs like KP duty.

 

One of Schuldt’s responsibilities was to clean the German soldiers out of the towns the Allies took over. He would go door to door with a couple other soldiers searching for them, often finding them hiding in attics.

 

“We would catch them and bring them to the [POW] camps,” said Schuldt. “Towards the end of the war they wanted to be caught by us because the Russians were so mean and they were scared of them. The Russians were just as mean as the Krauts [Germans].”

 

At one town they had bodies of German soldiers ‘lined up like cordwood,’ and he watched a little old German woman come and start looking through the bodies. She didn’t find who she was looking for and left. He saw similar scenes in towns across Germany.

 

Although he was involved in numerous combat situations throughout Germany, Schuldt only had one really close call. During one battle a bomb hit the hood of his jeep and exploded right above him, just missing his head.

 

“We had a bad time at the Rhine River,” Schuldt said, describing another battle. “The Krauts were on the other side and wanted to come across. The battle went on for quite awhile. Some of us would go on the bridge, and every time something came floating by we had to shoot it. We were scared a bomb would come by.”

 

One of the hardest things for Schuldt was the concentration camps. As they moved across Germany he saw a number of them, including Dachau, which he arrived at on April 30, 1945, the day after it had been liberated.

 

“At Dachau they were going to try to get rid of all the prisoners before the Americans got there,” remembered Schuldt. “There were lots of dead people everywhere.”

 

“It’s something you never forget. Those poor people. I don’t know how they could even live; they couldn’t even stand up. Their legs were only this big around,” Schuldt made a small circle with his hands to illustrate. “You can’t even imagine.”

 

He tried to talk to the prisoners but they couldn’t understand each other. He couldn’t share his food with them because they were afraid they would eat too much too fast.

 

“The hardest thing was first they [the soldiers] took everyone out of the gates, but then they had to bring them back in because they had nowhere else to go,” said Schuldt.

 

The soldiers went into town and forced the businessmen and residents to come out to the camp to clean it up and bury the dead.

 

“I felt pretty sorry for some of the German women,” said Schuldt. “They didn’t know what was going on.”

 

After the war Schuldt returned home and ran a car dealership with his dad for a number of years. He also spent 29 years as postmaster of Clear Lake.

 

“I didn’t talk too much about it [the war] afterwards,” said Schuldt. “It was pretty bad when I first got out. I’d be going down the road and start crying like a baby.”

 

Not long ago Schuldt went on one of the Freedom Flights, also known as the Honor Flights, from St. Cloud to Washington D.C. to see the WWII memorial, and he marched in the Veteran’s Day parade that was held at the St. Cloud VA Medical Center and Apollo High School Nov. 6. He will always remain a proud veteran.