Fairfield WWII veteran tells story of loss, liberation in Hitler's Nazi Germany
FAIRFIELD - Fairfield's Dan Dougherty, 98, reflects not only on loss but liberation each Memorial Day. His own story of service and sacrifice reads like a chapter of history.
The World War II veteran served in the C Company of the 157 Infantry Regiment in the 45th Division of the U.S. Army.
Dougherty graduated high school in his hometown of Austin, Minnesota in June 1943. Later that same month, he would join the Army.
"They didn't horse around in those days," Dougherty said with a laugh.
Just two years before Dougherty became a soldier headed for war, his uncle Ralph died at Pearl Harbor on the USS Arizona; hearing that news surrounded by his family is a vivid memory he can't help but reflect on each Memorial Day.
"We were listening to the radio on December 7, 1941. The first thing they announce was the Arizona had been hit. Boy, my dad's face just turned white. We knew he was on that ship. He went to the bottom with that ship," Dougherty said.
"We didn't know what a concentration camp was."
Honoring the sacrifice of those who came before him, Dougherty became a staff sergeant as WWII raged on.
Now, he's offering up a free history lesson about the day he and the American forces liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
"This is where I came in, along the railway track," Dougherty showed CBS13 reporter Ashley Sharp on a map.
"The company commander said, 'Guys, gather round. I have to give you special orders.' Nothing like that had ever happened. Alerting us to the fact that the division was in the vicinity of a concentration camp. It didn't mean anything to us. We didn't know what a concentration camp was," he said.
But what he and his fellow C Company saw on the railroad tracks on April 29, 1945 before they even entered the gates of Dachau haunted him for decades.
"I finally dealt with it," Dougherty said of embracing and talking about the horror of what he witnessed years later.
"We saw long trains of boxcars. All the doors are open. We make the horrifying discovery that the cars contained just totally emaciated human corpses — nothing but skin and bones — still in the remnants of their striped uniforms," he added.
Dougherty said he and the other soldiers were silent, unable to put into words the monstrosities that lie before them.
"It just kind of blew the soldiers away. I remind you, we were hardcore infantry troops, used to death and destruction," he said. "But you can't get used to walking up to a train of 39 boxcars, 2,310 corpses. That's about 60 bodies per car, and we walked by each of those 39 cars before we got to the camp."
Dougherty entered the camp and was given orders to fan out and look for SS guards.
"It was a huge place, with all kinds of buildings. Every one of those buildings had to be searched, every room. And make certain they weren't letting guards stay behind," he said.
His search kept him near the coal yard, the only part of the large property he laid eyes on. Still, seeing piles of bodies at every turn.
Dougherty says the administration of Dachau had collapsed in that final week; commanders ran out of fuel and had to shut down the camp's crematorium. The SS had no way of disposing of bodies as prisoners continued to die.
"One of the things I never could understand after the war was why the SS, who operated these camps, right up until the very end were moving prisoners from one camp to the next. Even though they knew the war was almost over, they were devoting railway cars and time and personnel," said Dougherty of what he's learned about the camp in the decades since its liberation.
"The SS were so brainwashed that they were convinced that even up until the end that Hitler would come up with a secret weapon that would enable him to win the war. And they would want these prisoners for labor. So they kept pushing the prisoners ahead to the next camp."
Dougherty and his company slept in the empty home of a former SS commander at the Dachau camp that night of the liberation.
"We talked until about midnight. We knew we had had a mind-boggling experience. I learned from the other guys that there was an awful lot of the camp I hadn't seen," said Dougherty.
Marching on
By dawn the next morning, they marched on to liberate Dachau's satellite camp at Allach.
"When the prisoners realized we were the U.S. Army, then the celebration began," Dougherty said. "The next morning it is immediately announced that the 45th division will occupy Munich. And that meant for us, the war is over."
Germany would surrender days later on May 7, 1945 -- the war officially ended on September 2, 1945, following the bombing of Hiroshima and the Japanese surrender.
Dougherty has spent the past nearly eight decades trying to learn as much as he can about the war he fought in.
"Here's the prison over here, this is what I never saw," he said, pointing to the prisoner barracks on a map of Dachau.
Dougherty finally laid eyes on the prison one month ago, when he returned to Dachau for the first time.
"I couldn't get over how large it was," he said.
On April 30, Dougherty traveled to Germany and spoke at the 78th-anniversary commemorative ceremony of the liberation of Dachau, which he himself helped write into history.
The horrors of Nazi terror have never been forgotten by Dougherty; neither is the price paid for freedom by the more than 400,000 American military members who are estimated to have died ending the Second World War.
Unlikely celebrations
After the liberation of Dachau and Allach, Dougherty's company continued on to Munich and knocked on the doors of German families, letting them know American troops would be sleeping there for a time.
Dougherty landed in the Reitzenstein home, where he celebrated his 20th birthday. The family made him a cake adorned with little American flags.
Decades later in the 1990s, Dougherty wrote a letter to the Reitzenstein family. When the war was ending, German citizens had to turn their weapons over to American forces. Dougherty was handed the family's shotgun that he brought back to America. It sat in his closet for 45 years.
Wanting to return it to the Reitzensteins, he wrote his letter. It fell into the hands of the grandson, Wolf.
"He had been five years old living in the house when we were there. I don't remember him, but I found him. He was still living in the same house. I wrote to him and said, 'I have your grandfather's shotgun. If you'd like it, I'll mail it to you.' He said, 'We'll come get it,'" Dougherty recounted.
The Reitzensteins made a trip to California in 1993 and were reunited with the precious piece of family history that had for decades been lost. What was built from there was a friendship forged between two men forever connected by war.
On a trip back to Munich, Dougherty visited the Reitzensteins at their home that he remembered well.
It just so happened to be the 83rd birthday of Wolf -- and yet another birthday cake was shared in that house between two unlikely friends.
Dougherty celebrated a birthday the day after this piece was written. He turned 98 on Tuesday, May 30.
