Category Archives: Family

The USNS General CC Ballou, Part 3: Fellow Passengers

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Sixty-five years ago my family crossed the stormy North Atlantic on the USNS General C. C. Ballou as displaced persons. In the early morning on April 10, 1952, while anchored in New York harbor, I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time.

In the past several months I have been contacted by two fellow passengers and the granddaughter of a third. One of them, while reading my book, realized we were on the same voyage and bunked near each other. Although she was only four at the time, she remembered the burial at sea described in the book.

Another refugee who crossed the Atlantic on the USNS General C. C. Ballou several months earlier learned about my book while doing internet research on the ship. He was struck with how uncannily similar our stories are. He contacted me and we’ve become friends. Writing the book is a gift that just keeps on giving!

By the way, the book is now available for Kindle readers!

Books make great Christmas gifts! Hint hint!

Posted on by under Daily Life, Excerpts, Family, War

apple_peel

Give your friends and family a really cool Christmas gift – a copy of my book! Below is an excerpt describing our Christmas in 1945. Christmas for your friends and family will be much better than ours was, especially if you give them my book!

Christmas 1945

My brother remembers that Christmas:

“The Christmas gift that year was part of an apple. Grandfather Josef Maurer peeled the apple with a knife. The peel was an unbroken spiral. My brother and I got to eat the peel. We also ate a little bit of the apple and ate the core. We ate the entire core, including seeds, but we did not eat the stem.”

You can make someone happy and purchase a gift copy here.

For those who have not read the book and wonder about the unusual title, the story behind the title is explained here.

Two Men, Four armies, Four Countries

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IMG_6045

The picture is of me in my advanced ROTC uniform with Dad just before I was to get an ROTC award. Dad, who had fought in three Axis armies, was very proud of me.

And now a retired US Army Colonel has read the story that spans the experiences of those men, from WWII to Vietnam, and loves the book!

Thank you, thank you, thank you. The book…it is a shame that we have so abused great adjectives i.e. awesome, outstanding, and terrific so (so is “so”)…in the United States Army lingo I will say “a job well done”.

Gerhard, your ability to tell your family’s story was and is a true gift; I understand “labors of love.” You made me laugh and cry and thank God for his mercy to you and your family especially where their lives were at great risk. It is a wonderful story of survival, heartbreak, determination, and love. Your research and capture of such historically valuable documentation was stunning.

Your family’s life story would make a great movie!!!!

-Dick Smith, US Army Colonel (Ret), former faculty member of both the Command & General Staff College and the US Army War College

Not in the book: the lifesaving lamb

Posted on by under Daily Life, Excerpts, Family

Many stories we never made it into the book. Some didn’t make it because I took them out, others because somewhere along the way one has to stop changing the book. Yet occasionally something triggers my memory and a story that I hadn’t thought about for decades suddenly pops into my head.

For example, several minutes ago a 64-year-old story came to mind:

I was very sick and near death from a severe allergic drug reaction. I had been in bed for maybe four weeks. My parents were not sure I would survive. In hopes of sparking a will to live in me, my parents brought me a newborn lamb. I remember the joy I felt at the beautiful fluffy little lamb beside me in bed. Their plan worked.

First visit to an American grocery store

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We arrived in Columbus, Ohio, from West Germany, via the Port of New York, on Easter Sunday, 1952. Prior to that the only time within my memory that I had had enough to eat was on the ship sailing to America. There were many new and amazing things to experience in our new country. The abundance of food was a pleasant culture shock.

Excerpt from the book:

Our first visit to an American grocery store

I remember our first trip to an American grocery store, the A&P on Main Street, near the Capital University campus. It was a family affair with my Mom, Dad, my brother, and me. A nice American lady helped us with the shopping, a big help since everything was strange to us. We had just moved into our home on Mound Street, and we had no food in the house; the cupboards were bare.

The amount of food in the A&P was astounding. I had never seen such a so much food or such a wide selection. We filled a cart (smaller than today’s carts) full of groceries, which cost about $10. (That is about $88 in 2014 dollars.) I did not know someone could actually have enough food to fill such a huge basket. While amazed and pleased at the amount of food, it almost seemed wrong to buy that much. We had a refrigerator in the house for perishable food. Now that was amazing!

First family portrait in America

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Our first family photo in America, from The Capital Chimes, April 24, 1952.

After a 10-day voyage through the angry North Atlantic we made it to New York Harbor.

A day after receiving our alien registration card we were on a train heading to Columbus, Ohio.

We attended the church service at our sponsoring church on Easter Sunday, the morning of our arrival. We stood at the front of the church and were introduced.

Thinking back: there were no shower facilities in New York, on the ship, during three months of out-processing camps, in Rothenburg, or in Ohrenbach. I’m sure we did take a bath the week we left Ohrenbach, months before. Between that last bath and Columbus the only way we cleaned ourselves was with a washcloth and a bowl of cold water. If we stunk, the kind Christians did not let us know.

30A newspaper article - front page

Can you tell from the picture that we were happy to be in America? My brother and I dressed up in our best clothes for the picture: Lederhosen. The only other clothes my brother and I had when we arrived were one pair each of sweatshirt-like pants and shirt.

The Capital Chimes published an article on the new refugee family who had just arrived in Bexley, Ohio.

The USNS General CC Ballou, Part 1

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uss_general_ballou

When we came to the States in April, 1952, nearly all traffic across the Atlantic was by ship. Our ship, loaded with cargo and immigrants, was the USNS General C. C. Ballou. This picture was taken in Bremerhaven, Germany, sometime in 1952.

ballou_manifest

We departed Bremerhaven for the United States, together with over 1000 other refugees. Most were heading to America; for some the final destination was Canada. Seeing our names on the inbound (to NY) passenger manifest is quite exciting.

Because I can speak German, lived in Germany, and taught German in my second career, most people who know me think I was German. The manifest shows we weren’t German citizens, instead we were “Roumanian” displaced persons. Our names are listed on lines 7, 8, 9, and 10.

We sailed for America on March 31, 1952.

1951 class photo

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1951
Gerhard Maroscher: 2nd row from the top, 3rd from the right.

From Gerhard: I just received a 1951 class picture via snail mail from a former classmate in Germany. I’m in the 2nd row from the top, 3rd from the right. I’m wearing a suit coat that Mom made by cutting down an adult’s coat. Since there are a few weeks till the book is in print, I’m considering adding the picture to the book. In June there was a class reunion of the four grades in the picture. Because I was working on the book I could not attend.

Hanna

Posted on by under Daily Life, Excerpts, Family, War

The book has a short chapter about those in our extended family who did not escape communist Romania. A 22-year-old cousin, Hanna, was arrested and taken from her home in the middle of the night and sent off to Russia in January, 1945. She became a slave laborer.

In her memoir she describes an event not long after arrival at her prison camp:

“It is winter, 1945. It is terribly cold. The cloth we wrapped around our mouths and noses to ward off the cold is frozen stiff from our breath; frozen on our cheeks. Our lips are tight and split and in our noses we have ice buildup. We are outside all day in the extreme cold, carrying loads of heavy stones with our handbarrows.

As we work we encounter a man. What does he look like? He is covered with hoar frost. Our clothing too, our head covering and hair underneath are white. But we do not look so ghostlike. Or does it only seem so? After all it is extremely cold.

The man is close to us. He is also slave-laborer, but one who seems to be already broken. He walks like a marionette with stiff frozen joints and his face is covered with hoar frost. But his beard – his long beard – is an icicle. We are shaken. His eyes seem to notice nothing. We are very close now; he does not see us. We have now passed him. The man is walking alone through the huge compound in the opposite direction.

What group is he with? We do not know. He seems older than we are. Maybe he has a family at home; wife and children, people who hope. For him hope seems to have died here.”