A Patriot from Gransee

By Klaus Langehans

A Patriot from Gransee is a brief narrative of Klaus Langehans from his birth in Gransee, Germany only a few weeks before the surrender of Germany during World War II, to the exodus of the Langehans family to America and of Klaus experiences during the Vietnam War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450068048

Klaus Langehans

Born in Gransee, Germany in 1945, just a few weeks after the surrender of Germany in WWII, his first often-interrupted four years of education was in Germany followed by a continuation of elementary and high school in New York. Inducted into the U.S. Army in 1966, he graduated from the U.S. Army OCS as a Second Lieutenant, spent a tour of duty in Vietnam, seeing heavy action as platoon leader, earning the Bronze Star with a “V.”

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Klaus Langehans.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2010904168

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-4500-6803-1

                            Softcover                          978-1-4500-6802-4

                            eBook                               978-1-4500-6804-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/14/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

586293

Contents

Acknowledgments

Part I: 1945 to 1956

Germany after WWII

Karol (Charles) Anders

Herbert Langehans

Neustadt a.d.W

Part II: 1956 to 1964

Exodus to the Promised Land

Part III: 1964 to 1969

Military Duty

Advanced Infantry Training

Officer Candidate School

My First Assignments

Vietnam

First Battalion/Twenty-Sixth Infantry

One of Many Firefights

Finally, Out of Vietnam

Epilogue

How to Explain Military Camaraderie

Dedication

This is a narrative of my life dedicated to my children, Michael, Tonya, and Melissa, and my grandchildren to tell them who their father and mother, Grandfather Herbert, and Grandmother Erna were in a time when the whole world was turned upside down, to give them an idea of what their heritage is and how it was to be. It’s important to me that they understand, as well as I did, the horrors and the kindness that people can give to one another and to my fellow brothers of the First of Twenty-Sixth Infantry Regiment Blue Spaders.

The world can be a horrible place. It can also be a happy and joyful place. It all depends upon how we learn to treat, love, and support one another as brothers and sisters. Always remember, the greatest gift you have is that of choice, a gift from God that you must exercise, be responsible for, and answer to.

Acknowledgments

A    special thanks to Professor Jerry Durgan whose encouragements

and technical skills were needed and whose suggestions were beneficial in writing this short but meaningful chapter of the Langehans family.

Another special thanks to Libbie Smith who untiringly typed, retyped, and gave input to help this narrative become a reality.

Part I:

1945 to 1956

Germany after WWII

I    was born into a hell on earth. For the past fifty years, I’ve read

and researched the finality of Europe’s World War II and the period around my time of birth.

Hitler’s Third Reich was no longer. Germany and most of Europe were in ruins. Many of the great cities of Europe were little more than rubble. The Nuremberg Trials, a series of trials notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II, was only a few months away, November 1945. Tens of millions of people had been killed. Highway and railroad systems had been bombed and torn up, making transportation difficult and often impossible. Hunger prevailed for the people of defeated Germany.

At the Potsdam Conference from July 16 to August 2, 1945, the Allies (Britain, France, and the United States) divided Germany and its capital, what was then determined to be the occupation of Germany, into four military occupation districts—French in the southwest, British in the northwest, United States in the south, and Soviet in the east. Each district was supervised by one of the Allies.

The final chapter in the destruction of Hitler’s Third Reich began on April 16, 1945, when Stalin unleashed the brutal power of 20 armies, 6,300 tanks, and 8,500 aircraft with the objective of crushing German resistance and capturing Berlin, which Stalin wanted and the Western politicians agreed to. By prior agreement, the Allied armies, positioned approximately sixty miles to the west, halted devastation in Berlin so Soviet troops at the Brandenburg Gate could advance into the city, giving the Soviets a free hand. The Allied generals, especially Patton, wanted to capture Berlin.

Initially, the depleted German forces put up a stiff defense, repelling the attacking Russians but ultimately succumbed to overwhelming force.

By April 24, the Soviet army surrounded Berlin, tightening its stranglehold on the remaining Nazi defenders. Fighting street-to-street and house-to-house, Russian troops fought their way toward Hitler’s chancellery in the city’s center. Inside his underground bunker, Hitler lived in a world of fantasy as his Thousand-Year Reich crumbled above him. According to the histories written by the victors, in his final hours, the Fuehrer married his long-time mistress, Eva, and then joined her in suicide. The Third Reich was dead.

In early spring, with snow still showing in the shade of now-leafing trees of Gransee, Germany, I was born Klaus Dieter Wolfgang, May 16, 1945, at 11:55 p.m., only nine days after the surrender of Germany on May 7 during very chaotic times in Germany, following the demise of Europe’s Second World War. Erna, my mother, was twenty years old when her first child, me, was delivered in our home in Gransee by my Grandmother Martha Agnes Krist.

erna.tif

Erna, my mother, was twenty years old

when her first child was born

Gransee endured, as did many other small villages, the fury of the heavy, nearly continuous Allied bombing of Berlin. That is to say that if Berlin targets could not be identified to be clearly attacked, British Lancasters, American