©2014, Aaron Elson
Lieutenant Dan Diel, of Topeka, Kansas, was one of 14 members of the 712th Tank Battalion to receive battlefield commissions during World War II. He was officially promoted during the battalion's occupation duty in Amberg, Germany, after the cessation of hostilities in Europe.
After I got my lieutenant’s bars, we were there at Amberg, and I didn’t have any uniform. Nobody had dress uniforms, it was just more or less field uniforms, and I didn’t even have any officer’s stuff at all. I was running around with enlisted shirts with the bars on them. That went on clear up until the middle of July [of 1945], and I don’t remember whether it was [Colonel Vladimir] Kadrovsky or [Captain Bob] Vutech that called me and said, "You’re going to Paris and spend your money." Because when you get a commission you get a $250 clothing allowance, and I had no opportunity to spend it. There were no officers’ clothing stores around. So they had to send me clear to Paris to buy a uniform. And I was in Paris on Bastille Day, on the 14th of July. They sent a 6-by-6 truckload from Amberg, and the first day you went to Frankfurt and spent the night. Then the next day you went from Frankfurt to Luxembourg, and you had a layover. And then you got on a train from Luxembourg to Paris. So you took off on Friday morning, you got into Paris Sunday afternoon, and your pass started at 6 o’clock at night. And it went through 6 o’clock Tuesday. On Wednesday you had to be back on the train, and you got back into camp Friday night. So you left on Friday morning, and the following week on Friday night you were back in camp.
Well, there was another young lieutenant from the 90th Infantry that was on that same trip, and we got to drinking champagne, and we drank a bunch of it. Well, when Wednesday night rolled around and everybody else was heading for the train to go back, we told them, "Have fun. We’ll see ya." We took off, and we went AWOL. For two days. They went and caught the train and reversed the trip, and we went out that night and got drunk. I mean we poured one on. Just drunker than hell off of that champagne. We got up, and we had to give up our bed. When you registered at these government-controlled hotels, you had to have a pass for those three days, and that’s all you could reserve that bed for. There were guys from another outfit that had rooms reserved for another two or three days after ours, and some of them had longer passes than we did. Anyway, one of them says, "Hell, just come up and pull the mattress off, and we’ll sleep on the box springs, you sleep on the floor."
Fine with us. So we went out and we got drunk. We came in and pulled the mattress off and slept on the floor and the next morning got up and oh, God, were we sick. We went out and spent the day, and that night, why, we took on a little more, but we didn’t get drunk like we did the first night. And Friday morning we woke up with a hell of a hangover. And we were still going to an officers’ mess to eat, they never checked anything, they didn’t give a shit, if you went in and flipped them a quarter or fifty cents or whatever it was fora meal, why, that’s all they wanted. And we woke up that morning and said, "It’s Friday. Do you think we ought to think about heading home?"
"Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt for us to get back."
So we’re wandering around in Paris without any pass. If somebody would have demanded it, we couldn’t show them a pass that was legal. So we go out and flag down some MPs, and say, "How do you get out to Orly airport?" And they told us and we went out, we got a GI ride to the airport, and we went into the operations office and told them where we wanted to go.
"Well, just go out there, and every plane that comes up they’ll announce where it’s headed for. When you get one going where you want to go, just go and ask them for a ride."
Pretty soon, why, they called one that was going to, oh, what in the hell is the name of the town that was about 30 miles from there, where they had the ... Nuremburg! There was a plane that was going to Nuremburg, and I told [the other lieutenant] that we ain’t going to get anything closer than Nuremburg. So we go up and ask the pilot. He says, "Yeah, but you’d better get on early because I’ve got a full crew. If you want a seat, just go ahead and somebody else’ll have to sit on the floor."
So we went and got on the plane, and pretty soon they come out and they’re sitting there looking around. Well, one of them had a nurse with him that they’d picked up somewhere, and they were gonna fly her back, and they had to make a detour to drop her off. And they dropped her off, and then went on to Nuremburg, and when we got there these guys that were in the detail that they were flying, they took off across the field somewhere. Then this pilot came over. He said, "Have you guys got transportation?"
I said, "No."
He said, "Did you eat?"
"No, we haven’t had lunch."
"Well, we’re going up to lunch. Come on, we’ll go up and eat, and then when we get through, we’ll get you a ride." So we went up and ate, and when we got through, why, he had a driver, and he told him what part of town to go into, and he dropped us off. And we hadn’t stood there five minutes and one of our own trucks came by, and we flagged him down and got on and were back in camp in the middle of the afternoon, and got cleaned up, well, we never really got dirty, but we went in and went to eat, and when we came back, why, here’s this truck that had come in with those guys that had been on the truck all day. All haggard. And Kadrovsky comes walking along, he was headed for the officers’ club when I was headed for the barracks. He says, "Diel. Weren’t you in Paris?"
I said, "Yes Sir!"
He said, "I didn’t know they got back."
I said, "I don’t think the rest of them did."
He questioned what happened. I said, "Well, we flew."
And he just grinned, and he said, "I can always depend on those old cavalrymen."
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