A Delicious Irony

Pete Philipps

— If at the very time my family was getting ready to flee Nazi Germany, anyone had suggested that one day I would return, I would have scoffed and said “ausgeschlossen,” out of the question. Yet return I did, almost exactly ten years after the end of World War II—not of my own volition, I hasten to explain, but at the “invitation” of what in those days we quaintly referred to as “Uncle Sam.”

Setting foot on German soil again, this time in U.S. Army uniform, was, to say the least, an uncanny experience. What made it even creepier is that I was billeted in the former Kaserne, or barracks, of a German army unit. It took me a while to get used to the thought that a German soldier may once have slept in my assigned bunk. Nor could I help looking at every man of a certain age I met and not wonder whether he was the one who shoved my grandmother into the gas oven in Sobibor.

After the customary eight weeks of basic training in Fort Dix, N.J., I was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for an additional—and quite unexpected—eight weeks of advanced infantry training. I finally arrived in Germany thinking, or I should say hoping, that I had been sent there because of my fluency in German; that I would be given a cushy job as an interpreter. That proved to be a pipe dream, as I realized the moment the company commander called me into his office and said, “Philipps, I know you are a college graduate, but you’re going to soldier along like everyone else,” an illusion-shattering remark I haven’t forgotten. So began my two-year tour of duty as an ordinary enlisted man in an armored infantry battalion.

There now followed relentless and exhausting days, weeks, and months of weapons training, make-work tasks, and war maneuvers in all manner of foul weather. What made it all the more dreary—and not to put too fine a point on it—I seemed to have been the only educated member of my platoon. I doubt that any of the others had ever read a serious book, been to the symphony, or set foot in a museum.

And then one day I got a bit of exhilarating news: I had been chosen as part of a small group of German-speaking GIs who were being sent to Mannheim to act as interpreters during the first display of an armored division’s weapons and other equipment for the Bundeswehr, the newly organized German army. Some 250 German officers, including two generals, were divided into groups, each of which was assigned to an American lieutenant and an interpreter. More than 75 vehicles representative of an armored division, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, were on display. My job, and that of the other interpreters, was to translate questions from the German officers for the American lieutenants—and vice versa. The one-week program felt like part vacation and part a visit to Disneyland.

For me the most memorable part occurred on the first day, around noon, to be exact. Despite the detailed briefings the interpreters had been given, we were not told what was expected of us regarding lunch, which was prepared in Army field kitchens under huge tents. After I directed my group of officers to their assigned tent, I stood outside, baffled, not knowing where I was supposed to eat.  A few minutes passed before a captain left the tent, strolled toward me and clicked his heels. “The colonel,” he said, “would be honored if you joined us for lunch.”

What could I do but accept? I was, truth to tell, ravenously hungry. The captain showed me to a chair next to the colonel, the highest-ranking officer at the table, and we introduced ourselves. It didn’t take long before he asked, “How is it that you speak German so fluently?”    

I had anticipated the question, which I had been asked many times before. As on previous occasions, I was damned if I was going to give him a straight answer. Instead, I told him that before the war my father had worked in the American embassy in Berlin and that he had insisted I learn to speak German. I don’t know whether the colonel and the other officers within earshot believed me. Probably not. Luckily he didn’t pursue the subject. He might have choked on his lunch if he had discovered I was Jewish.