December 29, 2025 • 53 mins
In this episode, 101-year-old World War II veteran Irving Locker recounts his extraordinary journey from the beaches of D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge. He reflects on the trauma of war, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the courage required to fight for freedom. With wisdom, humor, and unwavering faith, Irving shares why remembering history matters—and how optimism, gratitude, and sacrifice shaped the greatest generation. This powerful conversation inspires listeners to cherish liberty and honor the heroes who preserved it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast, and today
we have a very special treat. We actually get to
hear from someone from the Greatest Generation, Irving Locker, who
is one hundred and one years young and a World
War Two veteran who landed on Utah Beach on D Day,
fought through the Battle of the Bulge, and helped deliberate
(00:22):
Nazi concentration camps. He's one of the few remaining voices,
and in my short time talking to him before we
started recording, I can just tell he wants you to
know this story. And I say that because I think
so many of my generation grew up with grandparent parents
who either were in the military or went to World
War Two, and we didn't have those stories. We couldn't
(00:44):
get those stories from them. They just kind of shut
that part off, compartmentalized that part of their lives away
from us. And so that was why I asked, Irving,
are you sure, is there any place we can't go?
And he said, no, he wants everybody to hear it.
So welcome to the Irving Thank you so much for
being here.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thank you for inviting me. And just just so you
know and your people know, the soldiers veterans don't want
to talk about it because it brings back too many
bad memories of a war and living the way we lived.
And that's the reason that I don't want to talk
about it. But that's why I try to lecture. I
learned to thank God in the war, and I think
(01:24):
that's what God wants me to do, is lecture. I
don't charge any money, and I all of my things there,
but I lectured to people so that they know what
we went through, so that they could be free.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's it's such a critical time I think to talk
about this because, as you and I discussed, there's a
lot of chatter online right now. There are a lot
of people who are denying that this even happened, denying
the Holocaust, denying the things that you've told me that
are so horrific that we need to understand. We need
to know. These are things that I learned in school,
(01:58):
and I feel like we learned them in great detail.
We watched the video, we heard the president's voice, we
heard the announcements, we heard the voice of Adolf Hitler.
We heard these things. You know, I don't My children
haven't seen that. I will say my children, And I
don't know if it's that we have gotten too many
generations away that we don't play those videos that they're
(02:20):
not seeing that. I have a daughter in high school
and I don't think she's ever seen any of the
footage from World War Two. So that's why I do
believe that this story has to be told. And you
are the one that you were on the beach.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Absolutely was on the beach. You have no idea what
it is to land out these things. We went in
on what they call the Higgins boat. People don't know
that as we transferred from the large boat to the
LSTs et cetera, where the guns were still there, we
transferred to the Higgins boat where the front door lays down,
big ten foot door lays down. And I'd like your
(02:58):
people to understand I put out to YouTube. If they
go on to YouTube, they're going to see this in
pictures all the way down the line. It's serving locker
my story on YouTube, and there's no charge as they
go on that they're going to see what it is.
But basically, uh, these boats took us in and dropped
(03:18):
those big doors, and fifty men ran off into that
into that ocean and into the.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Field, Charry, tell us, take us back to that day
because you were you were obviously you've trained, you've prepared
for this, you've trained, there was training over in England,
there were everybody was prepared, but they knew the weather
was going to be an issue, so it was delayed. Today.
The nerves, what was the emotion and that time, I
mean it had to have been you had to been
(03:47):
geared up and then to hear it's delayed and then
wonder what's going to happen. What was it like for
you as a soldier?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Unbelievable. First of all, we were on those big boats
before we transferred on to the to the Higgins boat.
We were half seasick. Those big boats rock and they're
just standing still.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So yeah, because the sea was so unsteady.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So unsteady. But that's when we hit that beach. All
of a sudden, everybody on the beach kept hollering, get
off the beach, because on the beach you're a victim.
Off the beach, you're a warrior. Get off the beach.
So that was a big thing that everybody kept hollering
because you couldn't stop to help anybody who was sick.
(04:30):
Hurt wounded. You couldn't stop them. The men on the
Higgins boat when we got off the higgabow it was
their job to go onto the field and anybody who
was hurt or wounded, they took them back on the
Higgins boat to bring them back to the big boats
for the doctors.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
But because the big boats had hospital almost like a field,
hospitals set up inside.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Well not what took us in, no, no, there was.
They were not. They were just trash boarding us. That's all, okay,
nothing big. But they took come back at least to
the to the bigger boats where they had doctors, et cetera.
That's how well we went in, basically. That's that's the story.
You know, on the on the on the beach, you're
(05:12):
you're a victim. You know, off the beach, you're a warrior.
Get off the beach, all right. Anyway, So look you're.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Running, but you get off the boat. I mean, I'm
I'm lucky. I was looking through the pictures again, and
I mean, you're you're running through the water. You're you
already seem disadvantaged. You have all this gear. Now you're wet,
you are tired, you've been sick on this boat. You're
running right into a war. What is that? Is it
just the adrenaline that takes over? What was that like?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well? I think it's the adrenaline because you had no alternative,
really free if you took about five foot of water,
I'm five feet tall and we're loaded down whatever, you're soaked.
I was soaked. A lot of people couldn't June.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Was it warm?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
It was warm? It was, But basically that's what it was.
I was five feet tall and jumping in. But you
have to understand jumping in this was a shovel that
we had attached to us, with all of the equipment,
with everything else. It was very difficult, very difficult. But
hold on to that thought that on the beach you're
(06:20):
a victim. Off the beach, you're a warrior. And that's
what kept us going. And I was a staff sergeant
encouraging my men and working my men and doing everything
that I could to encourage them because you.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Were eighteen, right, yes, eighteen, and you are leading the men.
I mean, I think about the eighteen year olds that
we have today, I don't know, I don't know that
they could do that.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Well, you have to understand I'm the baby of seven children.
My mother, who was an angel at the time, well
she lived kept encouragers. Take care of your brothers, take
care of your sister. I was brought up taking care
of of everybody that I could, and it fit right in.
And that's one of the reasons that I think I
was promoted to that point. Because I came in as
(07:08):
a private and was promoted to a sergeant and a
staff sergeant. Well, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So this is June. This is June sixth of forty four.
You graduated high school in forty three. You're drafted immediately.
How long how many months are you in training before
you're actually over there?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well not that long, not that long because basically the
training you have to understand, we were trained on the gun.
When we went into four Dix, which was in New Jersey,
we had no equipment at all, and basically you just
took orders. You were trained to take orders. You know,
if they told you what to do, you did it.
Then there's no question about it. And even with the
(07:51):
big guns that we had, you couldn't put Most of
my men were deaf in both ears because of it.
You couldn't put cotton in your ears, because then if
you did, you could and follow orders or you had
something to blame it on. I didn't hear the orders,
so basically he would just subjected to all of that stuff.
And it was just one very difficult thing. And I
(08:13):
learned to thank God, and I mean that sincerely. In
the war, I learned to thank God. And I thank
God every single day because and I use the one
expression that's very very popular with me, but for the
grace of God go I people getting killed alongside of me,
people stepping on a mind blowing their legs off and
our arms off, and so I'm alive and well, and
(08:36):
I thank God every single day. And they come from
the heart, not the lips. With that, but anyway, all
of these different things, if you would see what we
carried in and the equipment that we had, plus the
fact that then they brought once we got settled and
once I got feels cleared, and that was my job,
(08:58):
was to handle the guns when they come in north,
southeast and west on a particular field. Plus the radar
and a lot of big things. There's so much to
talk about that people can't even understand. People think you
shoot at a plane. When you saw the size of
the shell. You shoot at a plane like you're shooting
a gun. You know, it's not true at all.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Basic show the shell again so people can see, Yeah,
you have that back there.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yes, you see the block part. This part of here,
the brass part stays on the ground. This is the
bullet that goes into the air. But then we have
a unit on there that sets the height in that Okay,
it's called a fuse setter. It sets the height of
(09:47):
the bullet. Plot. When it gets to the height of
twenty eighteen twenty five thousand feet whatever the radar designated,
that explodes. So you got a thousand pieces of metal
and at that area that the planes are flying into
or hitting the planes. And that's why we had the
highest number of planes German planes shot down and the
(10:10):
entire First Army with that because that's basically and I
could go through a tank like a piece of glass
with armor piercing shell of that size. So that's that's
the extent. But one of the big things that we
have to talk about. The people know or should know,
the Germans had what they called eighty h their guns,
same type of gun we had. We copied that gun,
(10:34):
improved it and called it ninety millimeter. But they knew
because of their guns, they knew the fields that we
needed because they needed them as well. So where they
knew all the fields, they would set up these big
signs off to mining. When they when they took these
people into the Holocaust, they needed labor. Basically, they needed labor.
(10:58):
You got to dig holes and put mines into the ground.
You realize you put a hundred minds digging a hole
for a hundred minds in different things. So they needed
labor to do that, and that's basically what the Holocaust
was all about. Labor.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
They so they were taking these people and forcing them
to work.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That's basically what it was at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Take me back to DDA for a second. You get
on your goals to get off the beach, but then
what where do you go? I mean, I think we
are all so familiar with the photos and the images
of the beaches being stormed. What happens next you get
off your you.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Go First of all, we needed they needed us to
protect that beach from people coming in with the planes.
You know when the type of planes either they can
bomb you or they have they straight few you know
what that means when they straight where the planes can
come right down to the ground with machine guns to
straighten you. So we had to protect that beach mainly
(12:01):
to get started. We stayed on that beach to protect it.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Were there was there equipment on the beach. I mean,
how did you get the guns there? They're in jeeps
or what are what?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
No, No, they came in after we did what we
did right off the we cleared it, but then it
was in. Then the bigger boats came in and they
transferred them in to take us into the shore. At
that time we had don't figure we had a battalion
at sixteen of these guns. I was in a battery
for of these guns. So in other words, ABC and
(12:35):
D batteries to that point, so other word for b battery.
I was in charge of the four guns. So I
had to bring them in and then set up north,
southeast and west in a particular field to protect the beaches.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And you're watching the skies.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Watching the skies. No, the radar is watching the skies. No,
the men we we can not watch the skies to
that point of we couldn't see the planes at all
if they were up that high, but the radar could
designate the plane. Now you're talking about before computers.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Right, how are you getting all this information.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
From the radar through through the cables on the radar?
On the radar would send that to the guns. We had,
like I said, fourteen men on the gun. Five men
to control dials, another the direction, the height, separate dials
on the gun that the radar set in. Nine men
to control ammunition with the men. But basically that's what
(13:39):
it was. That the radar could set that up and
tell us the height, the direction, et cetera. All the
technical end that we needed. They would send us through
a dial on the guns. The guns had the dials,
So I had five men controlling dials and firing the
gun and using the different things. Fourteen men on the gun. Okay,
(14:03):
so that's how they that's how it was directed in
to that point. But I could fire ten or twelve
shells a minute off that gun because as fast as
we were loaded in and fire that gun, another one
was put in to the shell and they would fire
the guns the same way. So that's why we did
(14:27):
such a good job, and that's why that's why we
were alive. I have to stay that truly and honestly,
that's why we were alive today because of the job
that not already we did, but everybody in the army,
everybody had a particular job.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And you did you lose men on the beach that day?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, we lost men on the beach. Not that many
in my outfit, not that many in my We lost
a lot of men. There are articles up and down
the line is the amount of men that they lost,
the amount of men that were wounded, amount of men
that were just laying there to that point. I didn't
lose that many men as far as I was concerned,
(15:05):
because of the way we entered. And don't forget, they
were in there a lot before we were. There are
a lot of men in there on that beach before
we got there to the point of bringing the big
guns in to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. So what's next? So you you're sleeping,
I mean, from our perspective, we can't even understand this.
You just storm the beach and you are ready to fight.
You are fighting for the at that point, how much
(15:39):
do you know about what is going on with the Germans?
Do you know? Do you understand the concentration camps? Do
you know what's happening?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
No? No, no, not concentration camp far as I'm concerned,
did not come into effect until almost after the war,
until the Elb River, then at the l River. Then
we located the called Garden Laken the camp. And that's
when I went in. And I went in only because
(16:06):
I was Jewish and could understand a little bit, because
your people have to know. When I went to the
German people and I said, where were your eyes? Look
what they did to these people. And the only opening
them the only answer I got which made sense is
if I opened my mouth or they'd been in the camp.
That's how strict it was, and that's how tough it was.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And I think that's a question we asked so many times,
like how did nobody stand up? And you forget that
there wasn't the freedom to stand up? What could you do?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
No? And basically people have to understand that your life
didn't mean a thing to these people in charge. Hitler
was no good, but the men he put in charge
of these camps became God and their own setup in
their own head. You do what I tell you or else,
and they did the what else without any question about it.
So when I talked to the German people about it,
(16:54):
because I couldn't understand how anybody could watch or see
these things happening and not do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
When you saw the camp for the first time, what
was that like? I mean, I think that we look
back and believe that Americans knew what was happening, But
I can't imagine what it was like for you to
walk in there and actually see it.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
The only honest answer I can give is that I
threw up. I couldn't handle it. I'm Jewish. What they
did to Jewish people, what they did to the men,
what they did to the pregnant Jewish women who had
the baby in the camp, would kill the babies, just
take the babies and kill the You can't even imagine.
(17:41):
I don't want to talk about to your audience because
I don't want to ruin anybody's incident. But that's what
they did, and that's what I saw, and that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's what That's what people need to know, because there's
too many people out there right now saying this never happened.
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I have pictures, I have pictures. I have a book
to show you exactly what what would I have in
it there, so that'll be a little while later. But anyway,
to get along with that, we we had to move
it all but the big guns. They would give us
different positions and move from one position to get us
(18:21):
into that into the battles to work it out. Because
every time see we were we were a full track.
They called them a caterpillar, which was the same type
of unit that pulled the guns. Okay on full tracks.
So what happened is when they had to move us
and then they which way they would come in and
(18:42):
post us up and move us right out.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
We have like tank tracks you're saying tracks, tank tracks
and the tank traps.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And to pull the gun, the top was a cabinet.
Fourteen men were in that cabinet when we pulled and
the gun. When we had full unit, we would hit
the beach, hit the ground, set it up, fourteen men
would get out put together. Because there's there's all kinds
of if you take a look, if people see the YouTube,
(19:16):
it explains the size of the gun and the way
it was transported with platforms with outriggers, with wires, with
a full unit that had to be moved and shoved in.
So that's basically what it was.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
But you're going into these You mentioned that you have
to go into these fields. You need a flat space
for so a field is the best place to go.
But they've hired, they have they haven't hired. They've essentially
stolen people and forced them to work, and they in
these fields, they had these land mines. So you don't
know what's safe and what's not safe. And I mean,
(19:53):
we've seen the movies, we've seen what it was like
on the ground from what Hollywood's perspective is. But you
were one of the ones that was going in there,
and you don't know if you're going to make it through.
You have to see if you can actually drive a
tank in there.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Absolutely right, because all I had was a big signs.
What we saw was the big signs. AH to mind
it it means attention minds. Whether you could believe them
or not, nobody knew. We had no alternative. That's why
I say I was, I moved my guns in. Do
I get out of that jeep? Do I go into
the field? Do they to take care of my men?
(20:29):
Very difficult? That's why I Oh, that's why I was
praised by President Trump, not so much for the Achilles,
but for what we did for the men, to try
to protect the men and do that. That's the right
stood out and that's why he honored me in different things.
But it was very difficult, not knowing whether you're going
to live or not live.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
And you're a kid, I mean, you're a kid. What
does this do to your faith? When you have I mean,
I imagine it's just you and God and a lot
of those moments.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You have to believe that because I did not believe
in God to that point, but I started to believe
in God because as far as I was going, I
had no alternative who could help me, who could watch me,
who could make my head go in and do these
things and get out of that chep and go into
the field and know that I may not come out.
So it's difficult, beside being shot at, beside being everything else. Yeah,
(21:26):
that on top of it, you know to work it out.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And this is this is the meaning behind the statement
freedom isn't free, and that I will say that we
every every year are our middle school takes the eighth
graders to Washington, d c. And on the Korean War Memorial.
They have that statement freedom is not free. And my
(21:51):
last year, my eighth grader stood in front of it
and she said, why would they say that? Why would
they put that on there? And I thought it's interesting,
so important, important for them to fully understand. And in
that moment you that memorial is so powerful because you
see all of the equipment on the men's backs, you know,
the statues of the men walking up the up the memorial.
(22:15):
And I just said to her, take this all in.
But I think that it's so hard to get them
to see it. So tell our audience what that statement
means to you. Freedom is not free.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
You have to understand, this is the helme that we wore.
Right now, the liner comes out of that helm. This
is how we washed, This is how we brushed our teeth,
this is how this is what we had in the field.
Can you even picture that living that way? To the
(22:46):
point of this is your helmet, and then you put
your liner back in, put it on your head, hopefully
predict your life. You know what I'm bringing out. So
that's that's what it was. And digging a whole at night,
how do you sleep? You have to dig a hole
and crawl into a hole and come out in the
(23:07):
morning and get back on the gun. And no rooms,
no hotels. No, you couldn't if you're out in the
field in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Are you ever in that situation we see in movies
where there's the trench on one side and the enemy
is on the other side and you can hear them talking.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
No, not to that point. No. I cannot say that
honestly because I was in a field, but my field
I needed range with that size gun. There were four
guns in that field north, southeast and west, so there
was nobody close that I could honestly say that to you.
That's what they're calling that. That's infantry in trenches where
(23:51):
you could hear the Germans or the enemy maybe in
the next trench over. We couldn't do that. We're in
a field, so those fields had to be you know.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
So that's the Battle of the Bulge. Was that a
surprise attack? What what was happening there?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
No? No, no, no, no, no, not surprise attack. We
were set up for that. That was a basically we
didn't know. They don't forget you have officers in setting
all the rules, setting your locations and everything else. They
tell you where to go, what to do, et cetera
to that point. But with the Battle of the Bulge,
the biggest thing was the weather was so bad. It
(24:29):
was the worst one they do. Snowy, cold and snowy,
and can you imagine digging holds into the snow and
the ice to crawling in. And like I said, I said,
my supply sergeant, I would send them to our own
dead men to take the boots off, take the coach off,
take whatever they could off, because that's it. We had
(24:51):
no no toilets, no sinks, no showers. You lived in
the field, and I.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Know, and how did they get supplies?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
How often?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And did you get?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Everything had to be brought to us. They had the
Red Orange, the Red Ball Express. The trucks would go
to the ports, go to the and supply, supply, supply
the bar and bring everything to us. We had a
truck with us with with ovens so that they could
feed it. But when we didn't bring get that in,
(25:22):
I would go to the farms. And that's why I
talk about my luger. I would go to the farms
to get whatever I could steal. I became the procurement officer. Wow,
whatever I could steal, whatever I could take away, And
that's how I found uh living in New Jersey. I
didn't know what that house was, you know, as far
(25:43):
as I and I went into one of the barns.
And when I walked out of the barn, there was
a little door and a little house, and I said,
what is that? And I opened the door and there
was a board with a hole in it. Now, honest
to God, I didn't know what I was in trouble.
But I said to the German, what do you and
he showed me what. I took it away from him,
basically brought it back on an eight foot piece of
(26:05):
wood and put that, bought the holes there, measured it out,
made a five holer so my men could sit down.
People have no idea my men could sit down and
as a toilet er to do that. And even to
the wood of a shower. I saw a German watering
his field with certain equipment. I took that away from her,
(26:28):
or I borrowed it, whatever they want to call it.
And I took every shower head I could find from
his house or anybody else's. Now, first time my men
had a shower in three months. Can you imagine the
colonel came in, the captain came in, everybody in the
Ouphite came in to get a shower and complimented me.
Because that's what I did, and the Jewish language helped
(26:50):
me do all of these things to find out.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
In the human spirit of that. I mean, here, you've
been out there for all of these months, and yet
you're still you still want to provide that because you
know that that moment of decency, that moment of feeling normal,
so important.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Well, and that's why I talked about my mother, who
was an angel, raised me that way, because she would say,
take care of your brothers and sisters, watch out for
the make sure of this. So I learned to live
with men. You have people that come in that were
alone or single in the house come in, and all
of a sudden, they put into a barrack with fifty guys.
(27:32):
This one's smoking, this one drinking, this one's playing crap,
this one shooting this. And I was used to that
because living with people, it's a different world, different life
living together that way. But I was brought up to
the point of taking care of my men from the
advices from being brought up that way. And it worked out.
(27:53):
And we have a theory in my outfit because you know,
I can talk about sergeant some of the sergeant you
do what I tender or else, you know, But I
didn't do that. I said, if we work together as
a team, if we work together, we got a chance.
They're coming out alive. And that's the theory that I
held all the time with my men, to the point
(28:14):
that even their children now that most of the men
are dead, but their children call me because I have
different things. We took pictures. I have a flag that
I took off a wall in Berlin, a Nazi flag.
It's an authentic flag, and I had a lot of
my men sign it. Their children come to see that,
(28:39):
and and just for their wives and children to show
them with their father's name and stuff. To do those things.
And that's what I get the pleasure out of trying
to help and trying to work it out.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And you did, and you made and you went through.
So the Battle of the Bulge was I believe they
say that was the bloodiest battle of.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Battle, but the weather was so and that was the
bloodiest battle because they were prepared for us, they were
waiting for us. There's a different things, you know, when
you catching them by surprise is what they But this
Battle of the Bulge, it was the weather was so
bad and everything else. So that's that's that part. And
(29:18):
what did you.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Say when you said you were set up? What did
you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Set up with the guns set up? You no, set
up to the point of the officers picking a field,
picking a section, telling us where to go.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So they were ready for this, but then.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
But the officer didn't know what was there. They were
hoping that it was clear or that you'd fight your
way in to get there. But the fact remans that
it's all territory. It's territory. They need this section or
that section. It's territory. And we were picked for that
because maybe the bridges. We had to protect the men
coming across bridges, we got to protect men coming out
(29:57):
of the water. We had all the different things that
took place that they knew when we didn't.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
But they why are you hearing on the ground at
this point you're fighting them back battle after battle and
make gaining ground. Do you know that? Are you? Are
they saying the war's almost over?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
No? No, no, no, unfortunately no, because they were afraid
of telling that to the men too, because then they
would back off. They didn't want us to back off
one second to do that. So it's just it was
a matter of pushing and saving your life. Basically, we
all try to save our life as well as doing
(30:34):
our job. But every man had a job to do
and he was responsible, and that's right. I talked about before.
They wouldn't let us put cotton in the ears because
then you couldn't follow orders if you had an excuse
you didn't follow an order. Different story, the same way
with a story. When we got to near where the
where the Germans were, the barns, the farms, we had
(30:59):
as you cannot go near those farms or touch an
animal off those farms, because if he did, you could
go to jail. They had to threaten us with something.
I went to sleep that night and we had a
guard patrolling, you know the area. Every night we have
guards patrolling while we slept. He woke me up in
(31:21):
the morning, he said, side, he says, I killed a cow.
I said, oh my god, you could go to prison.
What's the matter with you? Are you? I said, what happened?
He said? It was dark outside with black He says,
I heard a noise, he says, stop or all shoot.
It didn't stop, so I shot. When I got to
wear a shot, there was a cow unfortunately the same way.
(31:42):
Believe me when I tell you I didn't turn him
in at all. We ate like kings for a like
kings for a month. I wouldn't turn the bird. But basically,
that's that's following orders. That's that's following orders. You can't
kill a cow, you can't touch your animals, you can't
do this, you can do.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I think that's important to know, though, because we when
we haven't gone there, when we haven't been in a
situation like that, I think we have too often assume
that there are no rules when you're out there, but
there are many rules.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It was was, Yeah, they have to have monitored, not
to control men. Don't forget you. Yeah, got a lot
of sick men out there that are aggravated and worried
and everything else. So living that way, So you've got
to control them. So you got to do what you
have to do.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
How do you do that? What are the emotions? I mean,
doesn't anybody just.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
As far as I'm concerned, I talked about it before
I told jokes. I tried to get with my men.
I try to be friendly with them. And it wasn't
a matter of I'm do it. I did it. It
was a matter of getting along with them, getting along
with them, treating them like people, not anything else, but
(32:58):
treating them like people. And I must tell you I
became the procurement officer, so I would get a liquor,
I'd get everything else that I steal and give it
to my men, just to make sure that we were there.
But we were together and doing what we can for
each other's that's the big thing, even to the point
(33:21):
that I must tell you this is a trench knife,
the same way with brass knuckles. Now when they're firing,
when they're straightening you and you jump into a hole.
If a Germany's in that hole, one of you are
not coming out, and they got to jump in to
protect their life, just like you're jumping in to protect yours.
(33:44):
So it's not just a matter of shooting and killing,
and it's it's living. It's living. And everything had to
be brought to us, food, water, medicine, ammunition, everything because
we were out in the big fields. We couldn't be
nearest city. We couldn't mean you're a building to do that.
So that's that's but that's life. All of these daggers,
(34:07):
all of these things were still with distrusts still on them.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
And you're I mean at that point, if you're if
you have those, you're taking that for off of someone's body.
I mean you are hand to hand.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Talk absolutely are taking rough to somebody's body. But it
was a matter of a killer get killed. There's no
question about that. There's no question about you jump into
a hole, if a German's in that hole, one of
you're not coming out.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Do these replay in your mind?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah? Absolutely, replacing the love. Yeah. I have to be
honest with you. Believe me. A lot of nights, I
don't sleep when I talk about the war. I'm okay,
because I lecture. When I talk about the Holocaust, I
don't sleep at night. Was that because a man's inhumanity
to manner what they did the people human beings? And
(35:03):
but for the grace of God go I being Jewish?
Who knows you know what I'm bringing out or my family?
So you never know, you never know who, what were
or how to do that.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
You struggle with. I think that's profound you struggle with
the carnage of war, but you can't stomach what you
saw in those camps. You can't stomach. I think the
carnage of war is also a battle of soldiers, and
it's a different feeling when you meet a soldier, I imagine,
(35:37):
than when you see a pregnant woman who has been imprisoned.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, and knowing what they're going to do to the babies,
even to the point of people have no idea. You know,
when they came in, they kill the Jewish men. I
don't want to talk that much, but when they kill
the Jewish men, nobody would raise their hand. Nobody had done.
Would you believe they had the men stripped down and
(36:05):
take off their pants, take off their underwear. See who
it was circumcised? I mean, So that's the extent I'm
talking about where you're not human anymore. With that, you're
not human.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
That's those were the videos that we watched when I
was in high school. We watched the videos that I mean.
And to think that they recorded that at the camps.
They recorded people walking through the camps and the abuses.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
And.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You talk about the monsters that were in the camps,
And I've read books as well from people who were
in the who survived the camps, who say exactly what
you said. These people became like gods in their own
They felt like they controlled the world in this one camp.
But they were hideous. They were hideous, nasty people. When
(36:57):
you when you found so you went to the camps
after they were liberated, or tell me about.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
That, Well, we helped. There were men who liberated that camp,
and I was when I got to Gardlegan, which is
near the Eld River. I was a staff sergeant, so
I could do pretty much what I wanted with that
to go out into a different field. So I went
to that camp, and I've got pictures with my own
camera of that to that point. I've got pictures here
(37:28):
in this book with my own camera of different things
that I show people because they don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon podcast. You're a young man and you
are Were you at that point chosen because you could
speak you could speak it because your family.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
No, I was chosen because of the way I was
brought up with the men who I took care of
my men. I would Prome did uh basically I was
a pretty good soldier to that point in learning the
guns and being a staff sergeant. It would a bit
of a matter of controlling the four guns. And even
if a man on one of the four guns was
zeal or was wounded, I could pitch and r jump
(38:16):
in and do that job.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
That they were able to communicate with people at the
camps differently than others.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Right which camp and this at the gardillating camp? I
mean why, huh? Well, yeah, because I was Jewish? Right
again the language. But can you even imagine walking in
and seeing this type of stuff being Jewish and looking
at it and say, man's in humanity? The man? I mean,
(38:47):
where where is it?
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Where?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
What are we doing? A war is a war, but
you're still human?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
What when they knew they were? So when you were
getting there, I imagine that it took time to get
to all these camps because obviously the communication wasn't the
way it was it is today, so you had to
go from camp to camp to liberate them. When they
didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
I didn't do that, I'm sorry, no, no. I went
to guarda lag and only because we were near the
Elbe River. It was close to we'r eyes.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
But I mean the army in general had.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
To that's a different story. And again it's a job.
It's a job they do that they were called into
the headquarters and headquarters say okay, go well in see
what you can do. But I didn't have that.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
What what what were the did you ever hear from
people that did though? I mean, what were their reactions?
Your reaction? No?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
I never heard from other people. You know, the war
is something you're not associated right next door that she
can talk to two different people with it. You know,
we didn't know from one one outfit to another outfit
of what it was and what we could do was it?
So that's that's the difference.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
So what would you what do you want people to
take away from this?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
What? What?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
What lessons do you want young people to learn from you?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Freedom is not free. You got to appreciate it. You've
gotta learn. And I talked to the kids about seeing
honoring They see a veteran, thank them, say thanks to
a veteran. What does it what does it take? What
does it cost you to do that to show these
veterans that people appreciate what we did and we don't
(40:29):
get that we don't get that at all with it.
So it's a difficult it's a difficult situation, but I'm
very happy as far as I'm concerned, because I lecture,
I'm with people, I talk about this stuff. So I'm
I'm doing what I'm doing, what I think God wants
me to do, because people have to know that freedom
(40:50):
is not free, and that's what I do.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
I to talk to you a little bit about today
that when you, I will say I a few years back,
I interviewed a Holocaust survivor and as I walked out
of the room the wife who both had been Holocaust survivors,
and the wife grabbed my arm and she said, they
hate the Jews and they'll do it again. And I
naively felt like that was we had grown past this.
(41:18):
And then October seventh happens, and it's a horrific, a
horrific attack. And yet again we have people saying, no,
it didn't happen. What's your reaction to that.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Huh? Well, just like as I said before, I show
them pictures and say it happened. I lived through it.
It happened. Thank god I wasn't in the camp. You know,
the point of being a victim. But I show these
pictures and I talk about the fact of man's inhumanity
(41:51):
to man. What do they gain other than killing the Jews?
What do they gain? And even to the point now
that this day and age we've got problems up and
down the line here with that. Who knows? Who knows
what what the next step will bring?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Did you so? You but you spoke with some of
the people, the prisoners that were in the camp when
you when you went to and you know.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
You know today there's a Holocaust Day once a year,
and I go to the different churches where they bring
victims back in, people who were relatives or people who
were actually victims, they bring them in. So there is
a Holocaust Day that I've been to where I am.
So I go in and talk about that, to lecture
(42:39):
with them.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
What were some of the things that they said to
you when you went to the when they knew that
they were free, but the horrific events, how did they
say they survived?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
I can't answer that question. Only God can know. Only
God can answer that. Who knows what whatever this situation was,
that it was ended or somebody pulled them out, or
they got out, or they escaped you know they were prisoners.
They escaped, they crawled on the thesis or that, and
they got out and they were lucky. They were lucky.
(43:15):
And a lot of them who were lucky would not
admit that they were prisoners either. Doesn't never know, You
never know who you're talking to. You never know who's
in what, who's doing what. But it was a terrible,
terrible situation with the Holocaust camps, the amount of people
they killed, the amount of people that were wounded, the
(43:37):
amount of people who can't can't be straight in their
mind mentally today because of what happens. I mean, man's inhumanity,
the man I can't. I can't even understand it, and
neither can most of the people.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Well, you came back, you came back from war and
you got married. How old were you when you got married?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Oh, I'm married seventy seven years. I was twenty five.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Twenty five, so you were what back for about five years?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And believe me, we're two brothers married to two sisters.
I went to school with my wife's sister. After the war,
I introduced my older brother to her, who was older
than me, and they got married, or they got intent.
My mother, who was an angel. They didn't have a
father at the time, so it was the two girls
and their mothers. My mother would invite them to come
(44:33):
to our home and associate with her, and that's how
I met my wife. So we're two brothers married to
two sisters and I'm married seventy seven years and I
shall tell her every day how much I love her.
You gotta use it. You gotta If you don't use it,
you lose it. So you got to work at it.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So that's your secret to a long marriage.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Appreciation, appreciation and tell her. You gotta tell her your
love her. You gotta talk about it. You got to
show her. It's a show and tell businesses because most
people you know today, with what's going on, they don't
do that. They don't do that.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
I like that marriage is a show and tell business.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
To show and tell. And what's the big deal to say, Hey,
I tell people other than my wife, did anybody tell
you they love you today? If they say no, I'll
be the first one to tell you okay. And if
they say yes, they did, say okay, I'll be the
first little Jewish boy to tell you I love you.
What's what's the big deal? But it's a laugh, it's
(45:33):
a smile, and that's how I get along with people.
I love to tell jokes and do different things. But
it's it's a matter of life, you know, in.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
This in this very time, in this very long life,
where you have experienced more life than most of us
will ever see, not only war, but love and relationship
and companionship and humor, all of those things. You are
also you can add to that now that you are
a songwriter. Yeah, okay, tell us about that?
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Well I have. Can I introduce you to her? The
actual people who wrote the song go here with me today.
I'd like you to see them at all. But basically
they took whatever stories I tell you and they put
it in to that. Yeah, well you heard, you heard
(46:27):
how much information he's got to share and he made
our jobs very easy. Getting to getting to write his
song was a blast. But it's a beautiful song and
I love it, and it's just it's great. It's great,
and I'm adeta to them.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
It is a beautiful song, and honestly, I think that
that is it's such a creative way to bring light
to your story because that's how I heard about it.
You know, you hear about a one hundred and one
year old veteran who is able to share the stories
of his time in a new song. His time, it
wore a new song. It's called if Freedom was free? Right?
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Right? If freedom was free or free? That's that's on
the song. Yeah, and I talk about it. Freedom is
not free, so just the opposite in life because you
have to work at it. It's not free. It doesn't
come easy. You have to work at it. And I
work at it. From my experience, it's amazing how many
(47:26):
people I talk to and using that same expression. If
you don't use it, you lose it. And being nice
to people? What is your things? Doing things for people?
And that's how I was brought up from Little Lawn
as being part of his seventy seven children. We learned
(47:47):
to help each other, do for one another, and that
that was my life bringing up. And I appreciate it
and I do it. I do it because I enjoy it,
because it's so much. It's eesier to be nice to
people than it is not to.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Be So what is your message of faith and longevity
for young people?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
I believe in God. It doesn't matter the religion as
far as I'm concerned. There's a God above us, and
you have something to talk to, somebody to hold on to,
somebody to spread the word. And I fully believe that
even when I meet new people and I meet people,
it's talking about this fact that that how lucky we
(48:34):
are to be alive and well at one hundred and
one years old, and I still work out at a gym,
and I still do everything that I can, and I
still dance with my wife of seventy seven years. So
you've got to be grateful, and you got to promote it.
You got to talk about it. I do anyway, And
(48:55):
if I get a lot of people to talk about
the fact of living life and enjoying life.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
It sounds like the secret to staying young is optimism.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
I would say. Yet, I would say I would use
that this optimism because you don't know, really truly, you
don't know what the next second will bring, you know
what the next minute will bring. And that's how we
need That's how we lived in the war. We didn't
know what the next minute would bring, or the next
bullet would bring, or the next illness would bring. And
(49:26):
I still even till today where I live now in Florida,
there are people who go to the hospitals to visit veterans,
and I do that with them. I go there, I
visit with them. As a woman called me Ree bogged
it off the same way she does that. So I
(49:47):
go over there just to spread the word, make them laugh,
give its rhythm, tell them how much we appreciate their
life and what they did for us. And I think
most people have to do that because they forget about
what we did or what the what the men and women,
men and women and the armedforces, what they did for
(50:08):
them to keep us free and keep us alive.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
That's why your story is so powerful, because so few people,
young people nowadays, are hearing the on the ground, harsh stories,
the harsh weather, the sleeping outside, having wet clothes, no shower,
people sick, having to deal with trying to treat people
(50:32):
with illness and treat people with injury, and keep going
and keep going. And that was all for us. That
was all for us so that we could live the
life that we have today.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
You got it, You got it covered. You covered that,
you covered the whole thing right now. You did a
good job covering that situation. But we not. Is to
be true, you have to do it and you have
to work at it, and if you don't work at it,
you lose it because so many people just don't talk
about it, and most of the veteran and don't talk
about it because bring back too many bad memories.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah, I appreciate. I appreciate that you have been willing
to talk about it and the detail that you've gone
into and just the inspiration that you are. It has
been so lovely talking to you and hearing your story
and your willingness to share and your enthusiasm through all
of this has been amazing. Irving Locker, you are an
(51:26):
amazing man. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, really truly,
because this has been a wonderful experience for me.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Well, I can't tell you how thankful I am. And
I know all of our listeners are thankful as well.
They're all listening and they know that you are the
real deal.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Well, I'm the real deal because it comes from the heart,
not the lips, because we talk about it, and I
talk about it in a good sense of humor, good
sense of way, and people have to know and understand
and thank a veteran for what they have done, so
that we could be free.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Me included. I'm free today, and I thank a veteran
the same way because things are still going on after
the war. It doesn't have to be a war. Veterans
are still doing a good job, and you've got to
be grateful. So I thank God and I thank veterans,
and I thank you, we thank you.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
And it's a powerful message message, so powerful. I thank
you so much for being on and I thank everybody
out there for listening. As you all know. If you
want to hear this, you can go to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, share it on Rumble, share it on YouTube.
People can watch it. If you do want to watch it.
You can see Irving held up a lot of his memorabilia,
(52:44):
so you can see it actually on Rumble or YouTube
at Tutor Dixon, So make sure you tune in there
too because you'll see some pretty interesting memorabilia from many,
many years ago during World War two. Thank you so much,
and thank you for joining us. Everyone a blast.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Day, right, and thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Really enduring
Speaker 1 (53:08):
MHM.
You are listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast, and today
we have a very special treat. We actually get to
hear from someone from the Greatest Generation, Irving Locker, who
is one hundred and one years young and a World
War Two veteran who landed on Utah Beach on D Day,
fought through the Battle of the Bulge, and helped deliberate
(00:22):
Nazi concentration camps. He's one of the few remaining voices,
and in my short time talking to him before we
started recording, I can just tell he wants you to
know this story. And I say that because I think
so many of my generation grew up with grandparent parents
who either were in the military or went to World
War Two, and we didn't have those stories. We couldn't
(00:44):
get those stories from them. They just kind of shut
that part off, compartmentalized that part of their lives away
from us. And so that was why I asked, Irving,
are you sure, is there any place we can't go?
And he said, no, he wants everybody to hear it.
So welcome to the Irving Thank you so much for
being here.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thank you for inviting me. And just just so you
know and your people know, the soldiers veterans don't want
to talk about it because it brings back too many
bad memories of a war and living the way we lived.
And that's the reason that I don't want to talk
about it. But that's why I try to lecture. I
learned to thank God in the war, and I think
(01:24):
that's what God wants me to do, is lecture. I
don't charge any money, and I all of my things there,
but I lectured to people so that they know what
we went through, so that they could be free.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's it's such a critical time I think to talk
about this because, as you and I discussed, there's a
lot of chatter online right now. There are a lot
of people who are denying that this even happened, denying
the Holocaust, denying the things that you've told me that
are so horrific that we need to understand. We need
to know. These are things that I learned in school,
(01:58):
and I feel like we learned them in great detail.
We watched the video, we heard the president's voice, we
heard the announcements, we heard the voice of Adolf Hitler.
We heard these things. You know, I don't My children
haven't seen that. I will say my children, And I
don't know if it's that we have gotten too many
generations away that we don't play those videos that they're
(02:20):
not seeing that. I have a daughter in high school
and I don't think she's ever seen any of the
footage from World War Two. So that's why I do
believe that this story has to be told. And you
are the one that you were on the beach.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Absolutely was on the beach. You have no idea what
it is to land out these things. We went in
on what they call the Higgins boat. People don't know
that as we transferred from the large boat to the
LSTs et cetera, where the guns were still there, we
transferred to the Higgins boat where the front door lays down,
big ten foot door lays down. And I'd like your
(02:58):
people to understand I put out to YouTube. If they
go on to YouTube, they're going to see this in
pictures all the way down the line. It's serving locker
my story on YouTube, and there's no charge as they
go on that they're going to see what it is.
But basically, uh, these boats took us in and dropped
(03:18):
those big doors, and fifty men ran off into that
into that ocean and into the.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Field, Charry, tell us, take us back to that day
because you were you were obviously you've trained, you've prepared
for this, you've trained, there was training over in England,
there were everybody was prepared, but they knew the weather
was going to be an issue, so it was delayed. Today.
The nerves, what was the emotion and that time, I
mean it had to have been you had to been
(03:47):
geared up and then to hear it's delayed and then
wonder what's going to happen. What was it like for
you as a soldier?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Unbelievable. First of all, we were on those big boats
before we transferred on to the to the Higgins boat.
We were half seasick. Those big boats rock and they're
just standing still.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So yeah, because the sea was so unsteady.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So unsteady. But that's when we hit that beach. All
of a sudden, everybody on the beach kept hollering, get
off the beach, because on the beach you're a victim.
Off the beach, you're a warrior. Get off the beach.
So that was a big thing that everybody kept hollering
because you couldn't stop to help anybody who was sick.
(04:30):
Hurt wounded. You couldn't stop them. The men on the
Higgins boat when we got off the higgabow it was
their job to go onto the field and anybody who
was hurt or wounded, they took them back on the
Higgins boat to bring them back to the big boats
for the doctors.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
But because the big boats had hospital almost like a field,
hospitals set up inside.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Well not what took us in, no, no, there was.
They were not. They were just trash boarding us. That's all, okay,
nothing big. But they took come back at least to
the to the bigger boats where they had doctors, et cetera.
That's how well we went in, basically. That's that's the story.
You know, on the on the on the beach, you're
(05:12):
you're a victim. You know, off the beach, you're a warrior.
Get off the beach, all right. Anyway, So look you're.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Running, but you get off the boat. I mean, I'm
I'm lucky. I was looking through the pictures again, and
I mean, you're you're running through the water. You're you
already seem disadvantaged. You have all this gear. Now you're wet,
you are tired, you've been sick on this boat. You're
running right into a war. What is that? Is it
just the adrenaline that takes over? What was that like?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well? I think it's the adrenaline because you had no alternative,
really free if you took about five foot of water,
I'm five feet tall and we're loaded down whatever, you're soaked.
I was soaked. A lot of people couldn't June.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Was it warm?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
It was warm? It was, But basically that's what it was.
I was five feet tall and jumping in. But you
have to understand jumping in this was a shovel that
we had attached to us, with all of the equipment,
with everything else. It was very difficult, very difficult. But
hold on to that thought that on the beach you're
(06:20):
a victim. Off the beach, you're a warrior. And that's
what kept us going. And I was a staff sergeant
encouraging my men and working my men and doing everything
that I could to encourage them because you.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Were eighteen, right, yes, eighteen, and you are leading the men.
I mean, I think about the eighteen year olds that
we have today, I don't know, I don't know that
they could do that.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Well, you have to understand I'm the baby of seven children.
My mother, who was an angel at the time, well
she lived kept encouragers. Take care of your brothers, take
care of your sister. I was brought up taking care
of of everybody that I could, and it fit right in.
And that's one of the reasons that I think I
was promoted to that point. Because I came in as
(07:08):
a private and was promoted to a sergeant and a
staff sergeant. Well, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So this is June. This is June sixth of forty four.
You graduated high school in forty three. You're drafted immediately.
How long how many months are you in training before
you're actually over there?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well not that long, not that long because basically the
training you have to understand, we were trained on the gun.
When we went into four Dix, which was in New Jersey,
we had no equipment at all, and basically you just
took orders. You were trained to take orders. You know,
if they told you what to do, you did it.
Then there's no question about it. And even with the
(07:51):
big guns that we had, you couldn't put Most of
my men were deaf in both ears because of it.
You couldn't put cotton in your ears, because then if
you did, you could and follow orders or you had
something to blame it on. I didn't hear the orders,
so basically he would just subjected to all of that stuff.
And it was just one very difficult thing. And I
(08:13):
learned to thank God, and I mean that sincerely. In
the war, I learned to thank God. And I thank
God every single day because and I use the one
expression that's very very popular with me, but for the
grace of God go I people getting killed alongside of me,
people stepping on a mind blowing their legs off and
our arms off, and so I'm alive and well, and
(08:36):
I thank God every single day. And they come from
the heart, not the lips. With that, but anyway, all
of these different things, if you would see what we
carried in and the equipment that we had, plus the
fact that then they brought once we got settled and
once I got feels cleared, and that was my job,
(08:58):
was to handle the guns when they come in north,
southeast and west on a particular field. Plus the radar
and a lot of big things. There's so much to
talk about that people can't even understand. People think you
shoot at a plane. When you saw the size of
the shell. You shoot at a plane like you're shooting
a gun. You know, it's not true at all.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Basic show the shell again so people can see, Yeah,
you have that back there.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yes, you see the block part. This part of here,
the brass part stays on the ground. This is the
bullet that goes into the air. But then we have
a unit on there that sets the height in that Okay,
it's called a fuse setter. It sets the height of
(09:47):
the bullet. Plot. When it gets to the height of
twenty eighteen twenty five thousand feet whatever the radar designated,
that explodes. So you got a thousand pieces of metal
and at that area that the planes are flying into
or hitting the planes. And that's why we had the
highest number of planes German planes shot down and the
(10:10):
entire First Army with that because that's basically and I
could go through a tank like a piece of glass
with armor piercing shell of that size. So that's that's
the extent. But one of the big things that we
have to talk about. The people know or should know,
the Germans had what they called eighty h their guns,
same type of gun we had. We copied that gun,
(10:34):
improved it and called it ninety millimeter. But they knew
because of their guns, they knew the fields that we
needed because they needed them as well. So where they
knew all the fields, they would set up these big
signs off to mining. When they when they took these
people into the Holocaust, they needed labor. Basically, they needed labor.
(10:58):
You got to dig holes and put mines into the ground.
You realize you put a hundred minds digging a hole
for a hundred minds in different things. So they needed
labor to do that, and that's basically what the Holocaust
was all about. Labor.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
They so they were taking these people and forcing them
to work.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That's basically what it was at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Take me back to DDA for a second. You get
on your goals to get off the beach, but then
what where do you go? I mean, I think we
are all so familiar with the photos and the images
of the beaches being stormed. What happens next you get
off your you.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Go First of all, we needed they needed us to
protect that beach from people coming in with the planes.
You know when the type of planes either they can
bomb you or they have they straight few you know
what that means when they straight where the planes can
come right down to the ground with machine guns to
straighten you. So we had to protect that beach mainly
(12:01):
to get started. We stayed on that beach to protect it.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Were there was there equipment on the beach. I mean,
how did you get the guns there? They're in jeeps
or what are what?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
No, No, they came in after we did what we
did right off the we cleared it, but then it
was in. Then the bigger boats came in and they
transferred them in to take us into the shore. At
that time we had don't figure we had a battalion
at sixteen of these guns. I was in a battery
for of these guns. So in other words, ABC and
(12:35):
D batteries to that point, so other word for b battery.
I was in charge of the four guns. So I
had to bring them in and then set up north,
southeast and west in a particular field to protect the beaches.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And you're watching the skies.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Watching the skies. No, the radar is watching the skies. No,
the men we we can not watch the skies to
that point of we couldn't see the planes at all
if they were up that high, but the radar could
designate the plane. Now you're talking about before computers.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Right, how are you getting all this information.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
From the radar through through the cables on the radar?
On the radar would send that to the guns. We had,
like I said, fourteen men on the gun. Five men
to control dials, another the direction, the height, separate dials
on the gun that the radar set in. Nine men
to control ammunition with the men. But basically that's what
(13:39):
it was. That the radar could set that up and
tell us the height, the direction, et cetera. All the
technical end that we needed. They would send us through
a dial on the guns. The guns had the dials,
So I had five men controlling dials and firing the
gun and using the different things. Fourteen men on the gun. Okay,
(14:03):
so that's how they that's how it was directed in
to that point. But I could fire ten or twelve
shells a minute off that gun because as fast as
we were loaded in and fire that gun, another one
was put in to the shell and they would fire
the guns the same way. So that's why we did
(14:27):
such a good job, and that's why that's why we
were alive. I have to stay that truly and honestly,
that's why we were alive today because of the job
that not already we did, but everybody in the army,
everybody had a particular job.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And you did you lose men on the beach that day?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, we lost men on the beach. Not that many
in my outfit, not that many in my We lost
a lot of men. There are articles up and down
the line is the amount of men that they lost,
the amount of men that were wounded, amount of men
that were just laying there to that point. I didn't
lose that many men as far as I was concerned,
(15:05):
because of the way we entered. And don't forget, they
were in there a lot before we were. There are
a lot of men in there on that beach before
we got there to the point of bringing the big
guns in to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. So what's next? So you you're sleeping,
I mean, from our perspective, we can't even understand this.
You just storm the beach and you are ready to fight.
You are fighting for the at that point, how much
(15:39):
do you know about what is going on with the Germans?
Do you know? Do you understand the concentration camps? Do
you know what's happening?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
No? No, no, not concentration camp far as I'm concerned,
did not come into effect until almost after the war,
until the Elb River, then at the l River. Then
we located the called Garden Laken the camp. And that's
when I went in. And I went in only because
(16:06):
I was Jewish and could understand a little bit, because
your people have to know. When I went to the
German people and I said, where were your eyes? Look
what they did to these people. And the only opening
them the only answer I got which made sense is
if I opened my mouth or they'd been in the camp.
That's how strict it was, and that's how tough it was.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And I think that's a question we asked so many times,
like how did nobody stand up? And you forget that
there wasn't the freedom to stand up? What could you do?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
No? And basically people have to understand that your life
didn't mean a thing to these people in charge. Hitler
was no good, but the men he put in charge
of these camps became God and their own setup in
their own head. You do what I tell you or else,
and they did the what else without any question about it.
So when I talked to the German people about it,
(16:54):
because I couldn't understand how anybody could watch or see
these things happening and not do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
When you saw the camp for the first time, what
was that like? I mean, I think that we look
back and believe that Americans knew what was happening, But
I can't imagine what it was like for you to
walk in there and actually see it.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
The only honest answer I can give is that I
threw up. I couldn't handle it. I'm Jewish. What they
did to Jewish people, what they did to the men,
what they did to the pregnant Jewish women who had
the baby in the camp, would kill the babies, just
take the babies and kill the You can't even imagine.
(17:41):
I don't want to talk about to your audience because
I don't want to ruin anybody's incident. But that's what
they did, and that's what I saw, and that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's what That's what people need to know, because there's
too many people out there right now saying this never happened.
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I have pictures, I have pictures. I have a book
to show you exactly what what would I have in
it there, so that'll be a little while later. But anyway,
to get along with that, we we had to move
it all but the big guns. They would give us
different positions and move from one position to get us
(18:21):
into that into the battles to work it out. Because
every time see we were we were a full track.
They called them a caterpillar, which was the same type
of unit that pulled the guns. Okay on full tracks.
So what happened is when they had to move us
and then they which way they would come in and
(18:42):
post us up and move us right out.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
We have like tank tracks you're saying tracks, tank tracks
and the tank traps.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And to pull the gun, the top was a cabinet.
Fourteen men were in that cabinet when we pulled and
the gun. When we had full unit, we would hit
the beach, hit the ground, set it up, fourteen men
would get out put together. Because there's there's all kinds
of if you take a look, if people see the YouTube,
(19:16):
it explains the size of the gun and the way
it was transported with platforms with outriggers, with wires, with
a full unit that had to be moved and shoved in.
So that's basically what it was.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
But you're going into these You mentioned that you have
to go into these fields. You need a flat space
for so a field is the best place to go.
But they've hired, they have they haven't hired. They've essentially
stolen people and forced them to work, and they in
these fields, they had these land mines. So you don't
know what's safe and what's not safe. And I mean,
(19:53):
we've seen the movies, we've seen what it was like
on the ground from what Hollywood's perspective is. But you
were one of the ones that was going in there,
and you don't know if you're going to make it through.
You have to see if you can actually drive a
tank in there.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Absolutely right, because all I had was a big signs.
What we saw was the big signs. AH to mind
it it means attention minds. Whether you could believe them
or not, nobody knew. We had no alternative. That's why
I say I was, I moved my guns in. Do
I get out of that jeep? Do I go into
the field? Do they to take care of my men?
(20:29):
Very difficult? That's why I Oh, that's why I was
praised by President Trump, not so much for the Achilles,
but for what we did for the men, to try
to protect the men and do that. That's the right
stood out and that's why he honored me in different things.
But it was very difficult, not knowing whether you're going
to live or not live.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
And you're a kid, I mean, you're a kid. What
does this do to your faith? When you have I mean,
I imagine it's just you and God and a lot
of those moments.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You have to believe that because I did not believe
in God to that point, but I started to believe
in God because as far as I was going, I
had no alternative who could help me, who could watch me,
who could make my head go in and do these
things and get out of that chep and go into
the field and know that I may not come out.
So it's difficult, beside being shot at, beside being everything else. Yeah,
(21:26):
that on top of it, you know to work it out.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And this is this is the meaning behind the statement
freedom isn't free, and that I will say that we
every every year are our middle school takes the eighth
graders to Washington, d c. And on the Korean War Memorial.
They have that statement freedom is not free. And my
(21:51):
last year, my eighth grader stood in front of it
and she said, why would they say that? Why would
they put that on there? And I thought it's interesting,
so important, important for them to fully understand. And in
that moment you that memorial is so powerful because you
see all of the equipment on the men's backs, you know,
the statues of the men walking up the up the memorial.
(22:15):
And I just said to her, take this all in.
But I think that it's so hard to get them
to see it. So tell our audience what that statement
means to you. Freedom is not free.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
You have to understand, this is the helme that we wore.
Right now, the liner comes out of that helm. This
is how we washed, This is how we brushed our teeth,
this is how this is what we had in the field.
Can you even picture that living that way? To the
(22:46):
point of this is your helmet, and then you put
your liner back in, put it on your head, hopefully
predict your life. You know what I'm bringing out. So
that's that's what it was. And digging a whole at night,
how do you sleep? You have to dig a hole
and crawl into a hole and come out in the
(23:07):
morning and get back on the gun. And no rooms,
no hotels. No, you couldn't if you're out in the
field in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Are you ever in that situation we see in movies
where there's the trench on one side and the enemy
is on the other side and you can hear them talking.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
No, not to that point. No. I cannot say that
honestly because I was in a field, but my field
I needed range with that size gun. There were four
guns in that field north, southeast and west, so there
was nobody close that I could honestly say that to you.
That's what they're calling that. That's infantry in trenches where
(23:51):
you could hear the Germans or the enemy maybe in
the next trench over. We couldn't do that. We're in
a field, so those fields had to be you know.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
So that's the Battle of the Bulge. Was that a
surprise attack? What what was happening there?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
No? No, no, no, no, no, not surprise attack. We
were set up for that. That was a basically we
didn't know. They don't forget you have officers in setting
all the rules, setting your locations and everything else. They
tell you where to go, what to do, et cetera
to that point. But with the Battle of the Bulge,
the biggest thing was the weather was so bad. It
(24:29):
was the worst one they do. Snowy, cold and snowy,
and can you imagine digging holds into the snow and
the ice to crawling in. And like I said, I said,
my supply sergeant, I would send them to our own
dead men to take the boots off, take the coach off,
take whatever they could off, because that's it. We had
(24:51):
no no toilets, no sinks, no showers. You lived in
the field, and I.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Know, and how did they get supplies?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
How often?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And did you get?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Everything had to be brought to us. They had the
Red Orange, the Red Ball Express. The trucks would go
to the ports, go to the and supply, supply, supply
the bar and bring everything to us. We had a
truck with us with with ovens so that they could
feed it. But when we didn't bring get that in,
(25:22):
I would go to the farms. And that's why I
talk about my luger. I would go to the farms
to get whatever I could steal. I became the procurement officer. Wow,
whatever I could steal, whatever I could take away, And
that's how I found uh living in New Jersey. I
didn't know what that house was, you know, as far
(25:43):
as I and I went into one of the barns.
And when I walked out of the barn, there was
a little door and a little house, and I said,
what is that? And I opened the door and there
was a board with a hole in it. Now, honest
to God, I didn't know what I was in trouble.
But I said to the German, what do you and
he showed me what. I took it away from him,
basically brought it back on an eight foot piece of
(26:05):
wood and put that, bought the holes there, measured it out,
made a five holer so my men could sit down.
People have no idea my men could sit down and
as a toilet er to do that. And even to
the wood of a shower. I saw a German watering
his field with certain equipment. I took that away from her,
(26:28):
or I borrowed it, whatever they want to call it.
And I took every shower head I could find from
his house or anybody else's. Now, first time my men
had a shower in three months. Can you imagine the
colonel came in, the captain came in, everybody in the
Ouphite came in to get a shower and complimented me.
Because that's what I did, and the Jewish language helped
(26:50):
me do all of these things to find out.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
In the human spirit of that. I mean, here, you've
been out there for all of these months, and yet
you're still you still want to provide that because you
know that that moment of decency, that moment of feeling normal,
so important.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Well, and that's why I talked about my mother, who
was an angel, raised me that way, because she would say,
take care of your brothers and sisters, watch out for
the make sure of this. So I learned to live
with men. You have people that come in that were
alone or single in the house come in, and all
of a sudden, they put into a barrack with fifty guys.
(27:32):
This one's smoking, this one drinking, this one's playing crap,
this one shooting this. And I was used to that
because living with people, it's a different world, different life
living together that way. But I was brought up to
the point of taking care of my men from the
advices from being brought up that way. And it worked out.
(27:53):
And we have a theory in my outfit because you know,
I can talk about sergeant some of the sergeant you
do what I tender or else, you know, But I
didn't do that. I said, if we work together as
a team, if we work together, we got a chance.
They're coming out alive. And that's the theory that I
held all the time with my men, to the point
(28:14):
that even their children now that most of the men
are dead, but their children call me because I have
different things. We took pictures. I have a flag that
I took off a wall in Berlin, a Nazi flag.
It's an authentic flag, and I had a lot of
my men sign it. Their children come to see that,
(28:39):
and and just for their wives and children to show
them with their father's name and stuff. To do those things.
And that's what I get the pleasure out of trying
to help and trying to work it out.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And you did, and you made and you went through.
So the Battle of the Bulge was I believe they
say that was the bloodiest battle of.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Battle, but the weather was so and that was the
bloodiest battle because they were prepared for us, they were
waiting for us. There's a different things, you know, when
you catching them by surprise is what they But this
Battle of the Bulge, it was the weather was so
bad and everything else. So that's that's that part. And
(29:18):
what did you.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Say when you said you were set up? What did
you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Set up with the guns set up? You no, set
up to the point of the officers picking a field,
picking a section, telling us where to go.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So they were ready for this, but then.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
But the officer didn't know what was there. They were
hoping that it was clear or that you'd fight your
way in to get there. But the fact remans that
it's all territory. It's territory. They need this section or
that section. It's territory. And we were picked for that
because maybe the bridges. We had to protect the men
coming across bridges, we got to protect men coming out
(29:57):
of the water. We had all the different things that
took place that they knew when we didn't.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
But they why are you hearing on the ground at
this point you're fighting them back battle after battle and
make gaining ground. Do you know that? Are you? Are
they saying the war's almost over?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
No? No, no, no, unfortunately no, because they were afraid
of telling that to the men too, because then they
would back off. They didn't want us to back off
one second to do that. So it's just it was
a matter of pushing and saving your life. Basically, we
all try to save our life as well as doing
(30:34):
our job. But every man had a job to do
and he was responsible, and that's right. I talked about before.
They wouldn't let us put cotton in the ears because
then you couldn't follow orders if you had an excuse
you didn't follow an order. Different story, the same way
with a story. When we got to near where the
where the Germans were, the barns, the farms, we had
(30:59):
as you cannot go near those farms or touch an
animal off those farms, because if he did, you could
go to jail. They had to threaten us with something.
I went to sleep that night and we had a
guard patrolling, you know the area. Every night we have
guards patrolling while we slept. He woke me up in
(31:21):
the morning, he said, side, he says, I killed a cow.
I said, oh my god, you could go to prison.
What's the matter with you? Are you? I said, what happened?
He said? It was dark outside with black He says,
I heard a noise, he says, stop or all shoot.
It didn't stop, so I shot. When I got to
wear a shot, there was a cow unfortunately the same way.
(31:42):
Believe me when I tell you I didn't turn him
in at all. We ate like kings for a like
kings for a month. I wouldn't turn the bird. But basically,
that's that's following orders. That's that's following orders. You can't
kill a cow, you can't touch your animals, you can't
do this, you can do.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I think that's important to know, though, because we when
we haven't gone there, when we haven't been in a
situation like that, I think we have too often assume
that there are no rules when you're out there, but
there are many rules.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It was was, Yeah, they have to have monitored, not
to control men. Don't forget you. Yeah, got a lot
of sick men out there that are aggravated and worried
and everything else. So living that way, So you've got
to control them. So you got to do what you
have to do.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
How do you do that? What are the emotions? I mean,
doesn't anybody just.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
As far as I'm concerned, I talked about it before
I told jokes. I tried to get with my men.
I try to be friendly with them. And it wasn't
a matter of I'm do it. I did it. It
was a matter of getting along with them, getting along
with them, treating them like people, not anything else, but
(32:58):
treating them like people. And I must tell you I
became the procurement officer, so I would get a liquor,
I'd get everything else that I steal and give it
to my men, just to make sure that we were there.
But we were together and doing what we can for
each other's that's the big thing, even to the point
(33:21):
that I must tell you this is a trench knife,
the same way with brass knuckles. Now when they're firing,
when they're straightening you and you jump into a hole.
If a Germany's in that hole, one of you are
not coming out, and they got to jump in to
protect their life, just like you're jumping in to protect yours.
(33:44):
So it's not just a matter of shooting and killing,
and it's it's living. It's living. And everything had to
be brought to us, food, water, medicine, ammunition, everything because
we were out in the big fields. We couldn't be
nearest city. We couldn't mean you're a building to do that.
So that's that's but that's life. All of these daggers,
(34:07):
all of these things were still with distrusts still on them.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
And you're I mean at that point, if you're if
you have those, you're taking that for off of someone's body.
I mean you are hand to hand.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Talk absolutely are taking rough to somebody's body. But it
was a matter of a killer get killed. There's no
question about that. There's no question about you jump into
a hole, if a German's in that hole, one of
you're not coming out.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Do these replay in your mind?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah? Absolutely, replacing the love. Yeah. I have to be
honest with you. Believe me. A lot of nights, I
don't sleep when I talk about the war. I'm okay,
because I lecture. When I talk about the Holocaust, I
don't sleep at night. Was that because a man's inhumanity
to manner what they did the people human beings? And
(35:03):
but for the grace of God go I being Jewish?
Who knows you know what I'm bringing out or my family?
So you never know, you never know who, what were
or how to do that.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
You struggle with. I think that's profound you struggle with
the carnage of war, but you can't stomach what you
saw in those camps. You can't stomach. I think the
carnage of war is also a battle of soldiers, and
it's a different feeling when you meet a soldier, I imagine,
(35:37):
than when you see a pregnant woman who has been imprisoned.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, and knowing what they're going to do to the babies,
even to the point of people have no idea. You know,
when they came in, they kill the Jewish men. I
don't want to talk that much, but when they kill
the Jewish men, nobody would raise their hand. Nobody had done.
Would you believe they had the men stripped down and
(36:05):
take off their pants, take off their underwear. See who
it was circumcised? I mean, So that's the extent I'm
talking about where you're not human anymore. With that, you're
not human.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
That's those were the videos that we watched when I
was in high school. We watched the videos that I mean.
And to think that they recorded that at the camps.
They recorded people walking through the camps and the abuses.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
And.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You talk about the monsters that were in the camps,
And I've read books as well from people who were
in the who survived the camps, who say exactly what
you said. These people became like gods in their own
They felt like they controlled the world in this one camp.
But they were hideous. They were hideous, nasty people. When
(36:57):
you when you found so you went to the camps
after they were liberated, or tell me about.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
That, Well, we helped. There were men who liberated that camp,
and I was when I got to Gardlegan, which is
near the Eld River. I was a staff sergeant, so
I could do pretty much what I wanted with that
to go out into a different field. So I went
to that camp, and I've got pictures with my own
camera of that to that point. I've got pictures here
(37:28):
in this book with my own camera of different things
that I show people because they don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon podcast. You're a young man and you
are Were you at that point chosen because you could
speak you could speak it because your family.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
No, I was chosen because of the way I was
brought up with the men who I took care of
my men. I would Prome did uh basically I was
a pretty good soldier to that point in learning the
guns and being a staff sergeant. It would a bit
of a matter of controlling the four guns. And even
if a man on one of the four guns was
zeal or was wounded, I could pitch and r jump
(38:16):
in and do that job.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
That they were able to communicate with people at the
camps differently than others.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Right which camp and this at the gardillating camp? I
mean why, huh? Well, yeah, because I was Jewish? Right
again the language. But can you even imagine walking in
and seeing this type of stuff being Jewish and looking
at it and say, man's in humanity? The man? I mean,
(38:47):
where where is it?
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Where?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
What are we doing? A war is a war, but
you're still human?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
What when they knew they were? So when you were
getting there, I imagine that it took time to get
to all these camps because obviously the communication wasn't the
way it was it is today, so you had to
go from camp to camp to liberate them. When they
didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
I didn't do that, I'm sorry, no, no. I went
to guarda lag and only because we were near the
Elbe River. It was close to we'r eyes.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
But I mean the army in general had.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
To that's a different story. And again it's a job.
It's a job they do that they were called into
the headquarters and headquarters say okay, go well in see
what you can do. But I didn't have that.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
What what what were the did you ever hear from
people that did though? I mean, what were their reactions?
Your reaction? No?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
I never heard from other people. You know, the war
is something you're not associated right next door that she
can talk to two different people with it. You know,
we didn't know from one one outfit to another outfit
of what it was and what we could do was it?
So that's that's the difference.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
So what would you what do you want people to
take away from this?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
What? What?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
What lessons do you want young people to learn from you?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Freedom is not free. You got to appreciate it. You've
gotta learn. And I talked to the kids about seeing
honoring They see a veteran, thank them, say thanks to
a veteran. What does it what does it take? What
does it cost you to do that to show these
veterans that people appreciate what we did and we don't
(40:29):
get that we don't get that at all with it.
So it's a difficult it's a difficult situation, but I'm
very happy as far as I'm concerned, because I lecture,
I'm with people, I talk about this stuff. So I'm
I'm doing what I'm doing, what I think God wants
me to do, because people have to know that freedom
(40:50):
is not free, and that's what I do.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
I to talk to you a little bit about today
that when you, I will say I a few years back,
I interviewed a Holocaust survivor and as I walked out
of the room the wife who both had been Holocaust survivors,
and the wife grabbed my arm and she said, they
hate the Jews and they'll do it again. And I
naively felt like that was we had grown past this.
(41:18):
And then October seventh happens, and it's a horrific, a
horrific attack. And yet again we have people saying, no,
it didn't happen. What's your reaction to that.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Huh? Well, just like as I said before, I show
them pictures and say it happened. I lived through it.
It happened. Thank god I wasn't in the camp. You know,
the point of being a victim. But I show these
pictures and I talk about the fact of man's inhumanity
(41:51):
to man. What do they gain other than killing the Jews?
What do they gain? And even to the point now
that this day and age we've got problems up and
down the line here with that. Who knows? Who knows
what what the next step will bring?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Did you so? You but you spoke with some of
the people, the prisoners that were in the camp when
you when you went to and you know.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
You know today there's a Holocaust Day once a year,
and I go to the different churches where they bring
victims back in, people who were relatives or people who
were actually victims, they bring them in. So there is
a Holocaust Day that I've been to where I am.
So I go in and talk about that, to lecture
(42:39):
with them.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
What were some of the things that they said to
you when you went to the when they knew that
they were free, but the horrific events, how did they
say they survived?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
I can't answer that question. Only God can know. Only
God can answer that. Who knows what whatever this situation was,
that it was ended or somebody pulled them out, or
they got out, or they escaped you know they were prisoners.
They escaped, they crawled on the thesis or that, and
they got out and they were lucky. They were lucky.
(43:15):
And a lot of them who were lucky would not
admit that they were prisoners either. Doesn't never know, You
never know who you're talking to. You never know who's
in what, who's doing what. But it was a terrible,
terrible situation with the Holocaust camps, the amount of people
they killed, the amount of people that were wounded, the
(43:37):
amount of people who can't can't be straight in their
mind mentally today because of what happens. I mean, man's inhumanity,
the man I can't. I can't even understand it, and
neither can most of the people.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Well, you came back, you came back from war and
you got married. How old were you when you got married?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Oh, I'm married seventy seven years. I was twenty five.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Twenty five, so you were what back for about five years?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And believe me, we're two brothers married to two sisters.
I went to school with my wife's sister. After the war,
I introduced my older brother to her, who was older
than me, and they got married, or they got intent.
My mother, who was an angel. They didn't have a
father at the time, so it was the two girls
and their mothers. My mother would invite them to come
(44:33):
to our home and associate with her, and that's how
I met my wife. So we're two brothers married to
two sisters and I'm married seventy seven years and I
shall tell her every day how much I love her.
You gotta use it. You gotta If you don't use it,
you lose it. So you got to work at it.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So that's your secret to a long marriage.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Appreciation, appreciation and tell her. You gotta tell her your
love her. You gotta talk about it. You got to
show her. It's a show and tell businesses because most
people you know today, with what's going on, they don't
do that. They don't do that.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
I like that marriage is a show and tell business.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
To show and tell. And what's the big deal to say, Hey,
I tell people other than my wife, did anybody tell
you they love you today? If they say no, I'll
be the first one to tell you okay. And if
they say yes, they did, say okay, I'll be the
first little Jewish boy to tell you I love you.
What's what's the big deal? But it's a laugh, it's
(45:33):
a smile, and that's how I get along with people.
I love to tell jokes and do different things. But
it's it's a matter of life, you know, in.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
This in this very time, in this very long life,
where you have experienced more life than most of us
will ever see, not only war, but love and relationship
and companionship and humor, all of those things. You are
also you can add to that now that you are
a songwriter. Yeah, okay, tell us about that?
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Well I have. Can I introduce you to her? The
actual people who wrote the song go here with me today.
I'd like you to see them at all. But basically
they took whatever stories I tell you and they put
it in to that. Yeah, well you heard, you heard
(46:27):
how much information he's got to share and he made
our jobs very easy. Getting to getting to write his
song was a blast. But it's a beautiful song and
I love it, and it's just it's great. It's great,
and I'm adeta to them.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
It is a beautiful song, and honestly, I think that
that is it's such a creative way to bring light
to your story because that's how I heard about it.
You know, you hear about a one hundred and one
year old veteran who is able to share the stories
of his time in a new song. His time, it
wore a new song. It's called if Freedom was free? Right?
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Right? If freedom was free or free? That's that's on
the song. Yeah, and I talk about it. Freedom is
not free, so just the opposite in life because you
have to work at it. It's not free. It doesn't
come easy. You have to work at it. And I
work at it. From my experience, it's amazing how many
(47:26):
people I talk to and using that same expression. If
you don't use it, you lose it. And being nice
to people? What is your things? Doing things for people?
And that's how I was brought up from Little Lawn
as being part of his seventy seven children. We learned
(47:47):
to help each other, do for one another, and that
that was my life bringing up. And I appreciate it
and I do it. I do it because I enjoy it,
because it's so much. It's eesier to be nice to
people than it is not to.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Be So what is your message of faith and longevity
for young people?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
I believe in God. It doesn't matter the religion as
far as I'm concerned. There's a God above us, and
you have something to talk to, somebody to hold on to,
somebody to spread the word. And I fully believe that
even when I meet new people and I meet people,
it's talking about this fact that that how lucky we
(48:34):
are to be alive and well at one hundred and
one years old, and I still work out at a gym,
and I still do everything that I can, and I
still dance with my wife of seventy seven years. So
you've got to be grateful, and you got to promote it.
You got to talk about it. I do anyway, And
(48:55):
if I get a lot of people to talk about
the fact of living life and enjoying life.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
It sounds like the secret to staying young is optimism.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
I would say. Yet, I would say I would use
that this optimism because you don't know, really truly, you
don't know what the next second will bring, you know
what the next minute will bring. And that's how we
need That's how we lived in the war. We didn't
know what the next minute would bring, or the next
bullet would bring, or the next illness would bring. And
(49:26):
I still even till today where I live now in Florida,
there are people who go to the hospitals to visit veterans,
and I do that with them. I go there, I
visit with them. As a woman called me Ree bogged
it off the same way she does that. So I
(49:47):
go over there just to spread the word, make them laugh,
give its rhythm, tell them how much we appreciate their
life and what they did for us. And I think
most people have to do that because they forget about
what we did or what the what the men and women,
men and women and the armedforces, what they did for
(50:08):
them to keep us free and keep us alive.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
That's why your story is so powerful, because so few people,
young people nowadays, are hearing the on the ground, harsh stories,
the harsh weather, the sleeping outside, having wet clothes, no shower,
people sick, having to deal with trying to treat people
(50:32):
with illness and treat people with injury, and keep going
and keep going. And that was all for us. That
was all for us so that we could live the
life that we have today.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
You got it, You got it covered. You covered that,
you covered the whole thing right now. You did a
good job covering that situation. But we not. Is to
be true, you have to do it and you have
to work at it, and if you don't work at it,
you lose it because so many people just don't talk
about it, and most of the veteran and don't talk
about it because bring back too many bad memories.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah, I appreciate. I appreciate that you have been willing
to talk about it and the detail that you've gone
into and just the inspiration that you are. It has
been so lovely talking to you and hearing your story
and your willingness to share and your enthusiasm through all
of this has been amazing. Irving Locker, you are an
(51:26):
amazing man. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, really truly,
because this has been a wonderful experience for me.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Well, I can't tell you how thankful I am. And
I know all of our listeners are thankful as well.
They're all listening and they know that you are the
real deal.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Well, I'm the real deal because it comes from the heart,
not the lips, because we talk about it, and I
talk about it in a good sense of humor, good
sense of way, and people have to know and understand
and thank a veteran for what they have done, so
that we could be free.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Me included. I'm free today, and I thank a veteran
the same way because things are still going on after
the war. It doesn't have to be a war. Veterans
are still doing a good job, and you've got to
be grateful. So I thank God and I thank veterans,
and I thank you, we thank you.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
And it's a powerful message message, so powerful. I thank
you so much for being on and I thank everybody
out there for listening. As you all know. If you
want to hear this, you can go to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, share it on Rumble, share it on YouTube.
People can watch it. If you do want to watch it.
You can see Irving held up a lot of his memorabilia,
(52:44):
so you can see it actually on Rumble or YouTube
at Tutor Dixon, So make sure you tune in there
too because you'll see some pretty interesting memorabilia from many,
many years ago during World War two. Thank you so much,
and thank you for joining us. Everyone a blast.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Day, right, and thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Really enduring
Speaker 1 (53:08):
MHM.
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