Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Mr. Bernard Rader, a true American hero who valiantly served this country in World War II. Today and everyday, we owe members of our military--soldiers like Bernard Rader and so many of his generation who…
Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Mr. Bernard Rader, a true American hero who valiantly served this country in World War II. Today and everyday, we owe members of our military--soldiers like Bernard Rader and so many of his generation who faced grave danger in order to restore freedom and preserve the dignity of mankind, our sincerest debt of gratitude.
I had the privilege to first meet Mr. Rader in Normandy, France in 2004, on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. It was then that I first learned of this man's extraordinary story of survival and heroism. A Private First Class with the 30lst Regiment of the 94th Infantry Division, his unit was ambushed and forced to surrender to the Nazis in October 1944. As a Jewish soldier, he feared his fate as a prisoner of war. Surviving his imprisonment, Bernard was returned to the Allied forces in one of the few prisoner exchanges to take place between the Germans and Americans during World War II.
For service to his country and in recognition of his combat wounds, Bernard received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. On November 6, 2007, Bernard was personally thanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and awarded the Legion of Honor, in recognition of his sacrifice for the Liberation of France. I join the many in honoring Bernard Rader--this Nation remains indebted to his service.
Madame Speaker, I would like to offer Bernard Rader's powerful and personal story for the Congressional Record. I am submitting ``The Ambush'', an article published in the Hartford Courant, which chronicles Bernard's war experience and faithful return to France with his family 60 years later, as described by his son Robert Rader--who I'm proud to note is from Connecticut's First Congressional District. I urge my colleagues to join me in thanking Mr. Bernard Rader for his service to this nation and for sharing his heroic story with all of America.
[From the Hartford Courant, July 25, 2004]
The Ambush
(By Robert J. Rader)
Dad and the two other veterans strained to pick out their
comrades from the pictures of basic training at Fort McCain.
``Remember this one? What was his name?'' Their eyes, now 60
years older, strained at the fuzzy prints. ``Have you heard
from Higgins or Schulman or Boyd recently?'' We were on a
ferry from Lorient, on the western coast of France, to Ile de
Groix. During World War II, the port of Lorient remained in
Nazi hands till the day after Germany had surrendered. All
three men had been imprisoned by the Nazis after being
captured in an ambush in October 1944: two of them were held
on the Ile de Groix, the third--Dad--on the mainland. The
boat glided swiftly across the water. The day was overcast,
with mist rising from the sea, but the sun would soon burn
the mist off and, as we reached the island, break through.
The three veterans--my father, Bernard I. Rader; Kermit
Harden; and Bob Moore--sat on benches in the cabin and talked
about the men who died. They remembered the food the French
people sneaked to them at a time when few had much to feed
their own families. And they talked about the young American
Red Cross officer, Andrew Gerow Hodges, who had braved
getting shot by mistake, either by the Germans or the
Americans, to arrange one of the few prisoner exchanges on
the Western Front in World War II. They dubbed their trip
``The Andrew Gerow Hodges Tour.''
The ferry nosed past a massive cement building that still
contained submarine pens. The low-slung building, several
football fields in size, had been built with walls 20 feet
thick to withstand heavy Allied bombing. The weather-beaten
structure was a monument to the slave labor that had
struggled to build it with wartime speed.
This would probably be the last time the three veterans,
all over 80, would make this trip to visit the countryside
where their young lives had taken such a crucial turn. Many
of their buddies who had wanted to come could not. Hodges was
not in good enough health to make the trip. They would see
the site of the ambush, where their patrol had come under
fire and their comrades had been slain, and the places where
they had been held prisoner. They would thank the French
people for the help they gave them. They would converse again
with the people of Ile de Groix, and leave a plaque
expressing their thanks on the wall to the entrance of Fort
Surville on the island, where Harden and Moore had been
imprisoned for 47 days in 1944. They wanted to pay tribute to
their five friends killed in the ambush by visiting the
cemetery at St. James, where they rest forever. And they
wanted to honor Hodges--without whom, they believe, they
would not be alive today. They wanted to tell the story of
what happened so many years ago and how he came to get them
out. With those goals in mind, the three veterans and their
wives and children had come back to Brittany. We family
members listened as the men recounted their war experiences,
as soldiers have done since long before World War II. Many
veterans of that war, who are now dying off at the rate of
over 1,000 a day, never talked to their families about what
they had gone through. But Dad did not shy from discussing
his war experiences. He watched World War II movies with
interest (we knew if there was a swastika on the cover of a
videotape we'd rented, he'd be interested), and, despite the
stroke he suffered in 1999, has spoken at libraries, schools
and other sites, telling his story and encouraging other
veterans to tell theirs. Mom has been his main support,
helping him in every way with these ``gigs'' and explaining
what had happened when Dad could not find the words.
Dad was trained as an infantryman and made private first
class by the time he shipped out to England on Aug. 6, 1944.
After further training, his unit sailed on a Liberty ship for
France, came ashore at Utah Beach on Sept. 3 and marched to
Brittany. He served as a sentry there, helping to keep the
Germans contained while the Allies pushed through France to
Germany following the D-Day invasion. On the October day he
and his unit set out on patrol, only to be ambushed and
captured, he tasted combat for the first time. Dad began
reacquainting himself with old buddies over the past few
years, as he became more proficient than we ever thought he
would be at email. He got in touch with a number of those who
had been in his company and was contacted by others after I
wrote up his story and posted it on the 94th Infantry
Division's web site. I thought it was important for me to
share this one last, great adventure with my parents. Curious
about the war, and an amateur historian, I knew I had to tag
along.
I expected that this would be an emotional trip. It did not
disappoint. The ferry landed in the harbor at Ile de Groix,
about five miles from Lorient. On this beautiful, green
island the Germans had set up artillery to protect their
position in the port. They had also set up a prison for
captured soldiers. It is hard to believe that such a
picturesque place would be ideal for a prison. But its
remoteness from Allied troops, together with its closeness to
the fortified mainland city, made it a perfect location for a
prison, with virtually no opportunity for escape. The island
had a far different mood on May 26 of this year, when our
little tourist group boarded a bus to travel to a lane out in
the country. The unpaved road, bordered by fields where
flowers grew wild, had been renamed in honor of the 94th
Infantry Division when Dad and some other veterans came here
four years ago.
Our group of veterans and their families were joined by
about 30 town officials, journalists, former members of the
French Resistance and others. We walked about 100 yards down
the lane and came to an area with ancient, weather-beaten
walls on both sides. Ahead was the entrance to Fort Surville:
a narrow archway the prisoners had been marched through 60
years ago. On one wall we noticed an American flag
covering something on the wall. Strangely, it had 36
stars. The mayor explained that the flag had been sewn in
1944 by a Frenchwoman, whose daughter now joined us. It
was to show support for what she hoped would be the
eventual liberation of the island by the Americans. It was
kept in the chimney of the house where the woman lived.
She had no access to a real American flag, so had guessed
at the number of stars. When a German was in her house and
asked her what the colorful cloth was doing in the
chimney, she said that it was used, like paper, to wrap
meats that were being cured. Had the Germans known the
truth about what she had done, she would certainly have
been punished. The mayor made a speech, the first of many
we would hear, extolling the amity between the French and
American people. He gave thanks for what these soldiers
had done in helping to liberate France. He then reached up
and gently pulled the flag down, exposing the plaque the
veterans had donated, and warmly presented the flag to the
three veterans. They accepted it with some reservation.
Their first thought was that it was such a wonderful work
by an Ile de Groix citizen that it should stay on the
island. But rather than taking a chance of insulting their
hosts, they decided to bring it home and exhibit it in the
Museum of the 94th Infantry at Fort Devens, Mass.
It was then the turn of the three veterans. They, too,
talked about the friendship and love of Americans and the
French. And they dedicated the plaque, which they had paid
for and which my family designed and had made in France. It
was black with gold letters, written in English, French and
Breton, the language of the region. It was for those who had
helped them by giving them apples, eggs and potatoes
surreptitiously while they were held on this island. It read:
``To the people of Ile de Groix, who gave us so much, when
they themselves had so little. Company K, 301st Regiment,
94th Infantry Division.''
The outpouring of love on both sides struck me as being in
sharp contrast to what I had been hearing about the French
and Americans since the U.S. decided to invade Iraq. We were
feted no fewer than six times by representatives of local
French governments. While I heard criticism of President
Bush, there was no doubt in my mind that there still existed
a love for the people who had returned freedom to them in
1944 and 1945. It seemed to me that we in the United States
seemed to be quick to answer French policy on Iraq with
mockery (remember
``Liberty fries?''), while the French people I met were
gentle in counseling us about Iraq. As citizens of a country
that has had its own problems fighting guerrilla wars in
Vietnam and Algeria, they made their opinions known with a
sense of deja vu. While Americans remember that we helped
save France in World War II, maybe we forget that it was
France that saved George Washington and the American rebels
during our Revolution.
The many receptions we attended all featured champagne,
some food (from a few crackers and cookies to a three-hour
marathon lunch) and many local government officials. I found
it great fun, especially trying to use my high school French
to converse with the inevitably non-English-speaking people
who would sit with us. I joked with my parents about how the
French seemed to have such trouble understanding their own
native language. We began to joke that certainly there would
not be a day without a local reception and a picture in the
local French newspaper of the three ancient combatants the
next day. And believe me, we kidded the vets about being
``ancient combatants'' many times.
Dad had been held in the hospital in Lorient because of his
wounds. We rose early one morning to visit it. Lorient held a
key submarine facility for the Germans and was considered,
along with two other ports, so hard to capture that the
Allies contained it, instead of attacking it, from 1944 until
1945. The submarine pens were bombed without effect, so the
Allies decided to make the city as uninhabitable as possible
for the Germans. Their planes dropped 250,000 incendiary
bombs on the city, destroying 90 percent of it. A young,
pony-tailed French hospital worker gave us a tour of the
bunker the Nazis built on the grounds of the facility to
protect injured German soldiers and sailors. He then
brought us up to the second floor of the hospital, where
Dad, who had been hit by a concussion shell, had been
nursed back to health. Because the hospital was being
modernized, the wing where he had been held was empty of
patients. The rooms were bare, but clean and painted in
dull, institutional colors. It took awhile for Dad to
recognize the room he had been held in so many years ago,
but at last he did, and when he looked out the window, his
memories flooded back. He remembered, he said, that the
Germans were all around and that he couldn't leave the
second floor. Outside there were more German soldiers, but
there was also a Frenchwoman who saw him looking out the
window. She must have known he was a prisoner, because she
cupped her left hand and on it, with the fingers of her
right, drew the Cross of Lorraine, the symbol of the Free
French. It was a sign to my father that he and the handful
of prisoners in the hospital were not alone. As he said,
when he thanked the Lorient officials for their reception,
that woman had given him something as important as food:
She had given him hope.
I get chills when I hear that story. I imagine Dad, a
wounded 20-year-old, unsure of what the future would bring,
lying in a hospital, surrounded by Nazi soldiers. During the
ambush, he had taken off his dog tags and his friend, George
Boyd, had buried them, since they identified Dad as a Jew. In
the hospital, he kept a picture of Jesus above his bed and
was careful never to reveal his religion. That afternoon, we
drove out to the town of Etel, which sits at the mouth of the
Etel River, which back in 1944 was on the front line between
the Allies and Germans. It was here that the exchanges of
prisoners took place. The veterans again told the story of
what had happened. Allied prisoners held by the Germans had
gotten word through to U.S. forces that they had nothing to
eat. According to a Red Cross account, the 94th Infantry's
commanding general asked Hodges to see about getting supplies
to the POWs. Hodges began making regular trips across German
lines. Though he was under the Red Cross flag, he was often
at risk of being shot by one side or another. He finally
realized a prisoner exchange would make more sense. To his
surprise, the Germans agreed. Allied commanders agreed, and
on the morning of Nov. 17, the first exchange began.
Eventually 147 soldiers were swapped in four exchanges, on a
one-to-one basis, with men of equal rank. The Germans refused
to turn over one British officer who had escaped several
times. They wanted five German soldiers with Iron Cross
decorations in return. Hodges then asked the Germans, ``If
you are such good military men, how could one British officer
be worth five of yours?'' After banging on the table, the
German officer relented. We have photographs of Dad being
exchanged and old, yellowed newspaper clippings announcing
the event. I had always imagined the exchange in black and
white, as in the photos, with the ``jollyboat'' carrying 10
men at a time going back and forth across the river. But,
now, in Etel, where the water was blue and the dock cement-
yellow, I imagined my Dad moving from black and white into
color. Though his wounds were mostly healed, he was on a
stretcher because he had gotten the flu a few days before; he
was coming back to the American side, no longer a prisoner.
He was overjoyed and his future was again before him, in all
the colors you can imagine.
There is no way to repay the debt Dad feels to Hodges. What
can you give to a man who has saved you from the very depths
of misery and the verge of starvation and found a way to
bring you back to the full color of life? Dad believes that
the way to repay him in part is to tell the story of Hodges'
courage. And he does: to newspaper reporters, to kids at
schools, to people interested in what happened during the war
and even to some people who made the mistake of sitting next
to us at an Indian restaurant that night. The next day we
headed out, on a rented bus, to where the ambush happened. We
were led by Frank Perammant, a Frenchman who was 14 years old
at the time of the ambush and befriended a number of the
American soldiers because he wanted to learn English. He
remembers them going out on patrol on the cool, crisp morning
of Oct. 2, 1944, because they walked right by his home. Our
bus first stopped on the side of the road, and Perammant led
us over to a plaque mounted on a stone wall marking where an
American lookout had been killed a few days before the
ambush. As he explained what had happened there, we walked
along the side of a house and along a fence, where he said
the American soldiers had come from. And then we drove
perhaps a quarter-mile down the road to the ambush site,
in the tiny hamlet of Kerdudal. As we got off the bus and
the veterans looked around, the questions started: ``Where
were the Germans? Where were their lines? What direction
were you coming from?'' Back in October 1944, the
Americans, who were containing the Germans in the Lorient
``pocket,'' heard there were a number of Germans
interested in giving themselves up. They set out, about 50
of them, walking through country crisscrossed by
hedgerows--ridges 6 feet high topped by thick, virtually
impassable hedges. As they walk forward, disaster strikes:
A scout is shot at the beginning of the line and the
patrol comes under heavy attack. As the Americans are
driven back, Dad bandages the leg of a wounded Free French
lieutenant and drags him 500 yards to a road bounded by
two high hedgerows, where the Germans cut off their
retreat and pin them down with automatic weapons fire. The
men fight for six hours as the Nazis pound them with 88s,
mortars, machine guns, grenades and rifle fire. The
Americans call in artillery, but the fighting is so close
that they are hit by the friendly fire. They find out
later they are outnumbered 12 to 1.
About 3 p.m., Dad sees a concussion mortar shell land 50
yards away, right in the center of the road they are in. The
next falls 25 yards away, and he knows he will be hit by the
third. It throws him like a rag doll to the ground. He's
helpless and bleeding from shrapnel wounds in his legs, hands
and right arm. He is in shock, not knowing if he'll live or
die, and, the fight blasted out of him, spends the next two
hours of the battle lying on the side of the road. As I stand
by the side of the road, I imagine I am in the scene. I hear
myself call out to this 20-year-old kid, numb and wounded and
lying on the ground, ``Hey, you'll be OK, this will work out,
hang in there--you'll make it!'' I tell him that he'll live
many more years and have a wonderful family and
grandchildren. As though I am the father, I shout expressions
of love and hope to this helpless boy lying there motionless.
By 5 p.m. it's clear reinforcements can't break through, and
those who can still fight are out of ammunition. One soldier
puts a white bandage over his rifle to signify surrender. He
stands up and raises the rifle. A German machine-gunner
apparently does not realize that he is trying to give up and
he fires. The American is cut in two. Finally, the Germans
understand and the Americans surrender. The Germans take the
Americans into captivity, with Dad in a wheelbarrow pushed by
his friend, George Boyd.
Two months later, Dad would write a detailed account of the
battle in a letter to his parents and sister Gloria. He
described the aftermath this way: ``It doesn't matter much
but we caused the enemy nearly four times our number
casualties . . . The Germans themselves respected us to the
extent of not searching us for weapons (taking our words for
it) and not forcing us to hold our hands up, telling us we
were too good a bunch of fighters to be shamed in such a way.
I don't know for sure if I killed and I don't want to. It's
hard to write because I hate to remember but I know you want
to know just what happened. . . .'' As I return to real life
in 2004, the three veterans can't tell exactly where they
were during the ambush. Perammant pointed out it was here the
first shots were fired. The vets were not so sure. The land
has changed. There are no more hedgerows; they were flattened
out over 60 years ago by farmers who decided that flat land
was easier to farm. Trees had grown where before there were
none. A few old houses were still there, maybe the only
surviving objects that could bear witness. A French couple,
working in their ever-so-peaceful garden, were kind as they
listened to the story, and said they thought the dirt road
they pointed out was the one on which the men were led away.
We walked down this cart path, retracing, the veterans trying
to remember. There are no battle markers here; the only other
thread to the past is the recollection of the three men. The
story they tell about the ambush is what makes it real. A
half an hour later, we're sipping hot chocolates and Cokes at
a little cafe as if what happened on this land 60 years ago
was ancient history. But something in me has been deeply
touched by seeing where this pivotal event in Dad's life had
happened.
As I sit in my hotel room and think about why I am so
touched by this ordinary piece of French countryside, I
realize that seeing the ambush site somehow connected me to
my father on a new emotional level. I feel I have come face
to face with Dad as he was 60 years ago, when he went through
the worst experience of his life. In some almost mystical
way, seeing him at the ambush site, at
the hospital and at the scene of the exchange made my view of
him and my connection to him more complete than anything I
had ever experienced. And it gave me a view of my family
history more alive than it had been in the stories I have
heard since I was a child. Returning with him to Brittany
wasn't about glorifying war; it was more about sharing a part
of the most frightening moments in his life in a way that was
so real, so close. It was like reliving a part of his life
through his eyes. They were now not just heroic tales of days
long ago; they were as recent and real as the reports we see
on the 6 o'clock news. I've often heard that men fight
battles not for their countries or for apple pie. When they
are in a foxhole or pinned down in a hedgerow, they fight for
themselves and their buddies. When they are gone, buried in a
foreign land, who remembers them? Their parents have long
since passed away. Their wives or sweethearts have moved on
to others. And life has continued.
So the veterans thought it important to say goodbye to
their buddies who died in the ambush in Kerdudal. We drove to
the Brittany American Cemetery and Memorial in St. James, a
beautiful burial ground, smaller than the more famous one
overlooking Omaha Beach, but just as well-kept. On a
beautiful spring day, we walked among the too-many crosses
and stars of David until the veterans found the graves of the
five men to whom they had come to pay their respects. They
stopped next to the cross over the grave of the soldier
killed when attempting to surrender during the ambush. In the
quiet, as we watched, they each stood on one side of the
cross and Kermit read a prayer written by the soldier's
brother-in-law. The haunting, final sound of Taps was heard
across the cemetery as the veterans stood with their hands
over their hearts. And tears ran down Dad's face. The
veterans remembered this man, as they remembered all the men
who had died that day in October. Each buried comrade was a
real person with dreams and emotions and, they thought, their
whole lives to look forward to. Each was more than just one
of the thousands of crosses and stars of David planted in
straight rows in the American cemeteries in Europe.
Dad has wondered aloud to me why he lived when his friends
did not. Why could he come home and they lie in the
cemeteries of France? There's no answer to these questions.
Maybe it was luck; maybe fate or God intervened. But surely
it was important for him to say goodbye one last time and to
remember. I watched him as he stood with his eyes closed and
wiping the tears from his face. Maybe it is just an automatic
human reaction, but I felt my own chest tightening and the
tears welling up in my eyes, too. But it was not only for the
men we were honoring that I found myself choking up.
It was also for Dad and what he had done. He had survived
the intervening decades and now, at an age when so many of
his colleagues won't attempt much more than a trip to the
supermarket, he had accomplished the four goals he had when
he had set out: he had seen the land again; he had thanked
the French people; he had said goodbye to his friends; and he
had honored Hodges.
While the trip was not over, for Dad, the journey was
complete. Mom and I were so very proud of him. For me, it was
a trip of a lifetime. I had relived the worst day of Dad's
life, in Kerdudal, and the best, in Etel. I had seen what he
had gone through in a way that no book and no movie could
ever recreate. I also had learned again from Dad how to thank
those who had served at a time of need, to honor those who
have fallen for our country and for those who showed
tremendous bravery in helping their fellow men.
This journey to the past was a gift from my father. For an
instant, he gave me the ability to touch the past and see him
and these places as they once were. I could relive with my
Dad that time of his life when he was young and strong and
thought he was invincible. That is a gift few sons ever get
to share with their fathers. I will always be grateful that I
had that chance.