Michigan: World War II veteran returns to German village where he served

From MLive.com: World War II veteran returns to German village where he served
In 1945, Marvin Drake stood in the doorway of a school in a German village, holding a Stars and Stripes military newspaper with a headline that said “War Ends.” Sixty-six years later, the Jackson man posed for a photograph in that same doorway.

Marvin Drake, 87, had hoped to one day return to the Bavarian village of Schonthal in southeastern Germany, where he was stationed for four months as an infantry Army clerk at the end of World War II.

He had been back to Germany, but didn’t make it to that Bavarian village until July.

Drake’s desire to revisit Schonthal smoldered inside him for many years, he said.

“I wanted to go back just to see the changes that had taken place,” Drake said. “It was not a sentimental homecoming; just a curiosity to see how things had changed.”

He and his wife, Shirley, had toured Germany a couple of times before, but never made it to Schonthal.

“We (his wife and brother-in-law) were over there four years ago on a riverboat tour,” Drake said. “I hired a taxi driver to take us to Schonthal, but on the way the driver got lost and we had to turn around.”

In February, a couple at the church the Drakes attend told them about a tour to Germany.

The couple said they were going to go on a tour of Germany with Mike Ross, a retired Jackson High School German teacher, owner of an educational travel service and a travel columnist for this newspaper.

Drake contacted Ross in February and asked if Ross could take him to Schonthal. Ross said he could start the tour a day early and take Drake to visit Schonthal, Drake said.

“When the other people heard about it, they wanted to go too, so we just diverted the entire tour over there (to Schonthal),” Drake said.

‘A big part of his life’

Drake and eight others visited Schonthal on July 5, the first day of the 10-day tour in Germany.

Drake’s wife did not go on the trip because of health problems, but her brother, Ken Heintzelman, from Seattle, joined Drake.

“We just got to talking in early spring,”Heintzelman, 77, said. “We didn’t make it the first time around. So I thought it would be very nice if we could try again (to return to Schonthal).”

Heintzelman said he and his girlfriend visit Germany every couple of years.

“My girlfriend and I go over there quite a bit,” he said. “(Schonthal is) a neat little place right on the Czech border.

Curiosity about changes in Germany led the Jackson man to visit the village where he had been stationed.

“I just wanted it (the trip to Schonthal) for Marvin, not for me,” Heintzelman said. “He always goes to all those (Army) reunions and it was a big part of his life. He’s kept track of a lot of those people that he was in service with.”

Drake’s wife of 60 years, Shirley, 79, said she wanted her husband to return to the place that had meant so much to him during the war. “In ‘07, we had a riverboat trip and had hoped to visit it (Schonthal) then,” she said. “We knew we were close to Schonthal.”

“For some reason, the driver didn’t know how to get to Schonthal,” she said. “We went all around hell and a half acre. He finally said ‘I’m lost.’ So we turned around and came back.”

Heintzelman was instrumental in encouraging Marvin to visit Schonthal, she said.

“My brother was the one who started talking about it this winter,” she said. “He said I’m going to get you to Schonthal yet.”

“He was very excited to go,” Shirley Drake said. “When it came time, I said, ‘Go, I can’t go with you, but go’. I have back problems and difficulty walking, but I wanted him to go.”

Ross described Drake’s reaction as “subdued.”

“In fact, everyone became reverently quiet. He walked around the now modernized square, lost in thought and memory.”

Fond memories

Drake said he remembers Schonthal as the place where he would sleep under a roof, use an indoor privy and not fear getting shot by an enemy. As an infantryman, it was the first time in a month he had such amenties.

“I had so many memories there,” he said.

Drake said he was 18 when he arrived there during the last weeks of the war.

“The infantry had the worst conditions of anyone,” Drake said. “They had the worst food and the worst living conditions. During the winter they slept out in the cold fox holes.”

“By the time I got into Germany, it was the last month of the war,” he said. “It was about a month before Germany surrendered. I got over there in early April and the Germans surrendered in early May.”

Because he entered the war so late, Drake said he did not see any wartime action, for which he is grateful.

Drake had served stateside for 27 months in an anti-aircraft unit and was sent to Europe as a replacement rifleman, he said.

He and his unit spent 10 days crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a troop ship before landing in France. He crossed France in a box car while en route to Schonthal.

Even though the war ended, it would be many months before Drake would return home in March 1946.

He spent four months in Schonthal typing payrolls because of the 100 men stationed with him. He was the only one who could type, he said.

Drake was transferred to two other German cities, but none had the same feel as Schonthal, he said.

“It was the most interesting time that I had in the service,” he said. “Just seeing how the Germans lived. It was a very primitive area really. They had electricity, but no running water.”

Like the Germans, the infantry division Drake was with lived in primitive conditions, but the unit made the best of it.

“It was calm compared to being on the road,” Drake said. “Having been on the road for a month, we settled into a routine.”

Part of that routine included bartering a dozen eggs from German locals for a pack of cigerettes, Drake said.

“With our canteen cups and a blow torch we could boil the eggs,” he said. “We got brown bread from the locals, too. I asked my parents to send me a jar of peanut butter from home and that was good on that bread, too.”

Drake has put his memories in a book that he wrote called “Million Dollar Experience.”

That book might help him recall his experiences, both old and new.

“Now it seems like a dream, I guess. It’s over and gone so quickly,” he said of his recent trip. “I’m sure I won’t be going to Europe anymore,” Drake said. “If my wife could go, I would think about it. She can’t do the walking and you really can’t do a proper visit without walking around.”