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Vet helped rebuild German city after WWII

Editor’s note: This is part of a series published every Monday between Memorial Day and Veterans Day honoring local veterans.

GIRARD — Not all those who went to Europe during World War II went there to fight in battles.

After the war was won, thousands of American soldiers went into the heart of Germany to help the country rebuild and recover into a new way of life.

John Katchmer, 90, of Girard, was drafted into the U.S. Army on Sept. 19, 1945, four months after the Allies declared victory in Europe on May 8, 1945.

Katchmer, who was then 18, was trained as an engineer and craftsman. When he arrived in Europe, Katchmer was assigned to the 355 Engineer Company where he was a construction foreman at a military encampment near Hanau, Germany. The area was heavily bombed during the last months of the war.

“There were some areas in the city itself that did not seem to take the brunt of the bombing, but surrounding towns and villages were heavily damaged,” he said.

Hanau, which was the birthplace of the Grimm Brothers, was bombed by British bombers in March 1945, a few days before it was taken by the U.S. Army. An estimated 85 percent of the city was destroyed in the bombing.

Many of its older monuments were destroyed and the medieval section of the city was leveled.

“In many ways, because of the level of destruction and damage, it seemed like we were going into hell,” he said.

They learned, however, some of the damage was self-inflicted by the German military and government officials trying to hide what had been happening before the U.S. military arrived in the area.

“One day, when going for a walk, we entered a warehouse where we found the shoes of the dead piled high near the top of the ceiling,” he said. “There were shoes of adult men, women and children. We saw bones and skull fragments.”

Katchmer believes, based on what he had seen, there had been a crematorium in the area where people were burned alive.

“We were assigned to a former German barracks,” Katchmer said. “The building we were in had a 60-foot-tall wall, which was 30 inches in thickness. We discovered a hidden weapons area behind one of the walls, where there was a cache of weapons. It was pretty well hidden. There was a couple loose boards that gave it away.”

Katchmer said after they told their superior officers about the find, they never saw the weapons again.

“I was in charge of working with 60 German prisoners of war,” Katchmer said.

Katchmer said some of the American soldiers treated the Germans with contempt and anger.

“I didn’t go for that,” he said. “The war was over. It was time to move on.”

Katchmer was discharged from the U.S Army as a tech sergeant in February 1947.

Years later, after he returned home and began a new life, Katchmer described receiving an Easter card with a German Mark in it from a woman he knew while in Germany.

“I still have that mark in a scrapbook,” he said.

After returning home, Katchmer worked in the construction industry for 50 years.

rsmith@tribtoday.com

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