He wasn’t yet 20 years old in early 1945, but he’d endured the worst winter in Germany’s history, living like an animal, sleeping in mud, enduring the cold, and living on the barest of K rations.
PFC Marvin E. Birnbach – U. S. Army serial number 31 896 670 – was part of Company “C,” 406th regiment, 1st Battalion, 102nd Infantry division. Since November 1944, the men of Company “C” had marched more than 65 kilometers fighting their way through Hottorf, Katzem, Erkelenz, Kückhoven, towns with names they could barely pronounce. They walked over roads strewn with the remains of buddies whose bodies had been obliterated by German artillery – dog tags, bullet-ridden helmets, blown off bits of arms and legs. They were taught never to stop, no matter what.
At the end of February 1945, the men were cold, hungry, exhausted, and low on ammunition. The goal in front of them: take Krefeld, a city only a few kilometers from the Rhine River. Krefeld was a key railroad and communication center, one the Rhineland’s most important industrial centers, and a crucial step to winning the war. And winning the war was key for this soldier to return home to his loved ones.
After the soldiers succeeded in securing the town of Viersen, they crossed the Niers Canal, a small tributary of the river Maas, on one of the few remaining bridges the Germans failed to destroy. The bridge was so narrow, driving a tank across it was like threading a needle.
Then only 17 kilometers of open farmland and the town of Anrath separated them from their goal. They approached Krefeld along the south side of the Viersen-Krefeld railroad tracks. Despite being dangerously low in ammunition, they succeeded in taking Anrath. Just past the town, a surprise barrage of small arms fire and murderous machine gun fire didn’t stop them as supporting tanks blasted enemy positions, allowing the men to continue marching forward.
While they readied themselves to attack, they were once again met with small arms and high direct fire from Germany’s 88mm artillery, affectionately called the “ack ack.” By the time a soldier heard the whistle of an 88 shell, it had already passed. The shells traveled faster than the speed of sound, and that semi-automatic weapon was one of the most accurate and lethal in modern history – the number one cause of death for Allied infantrymen. Men often said that the Germans were so precise with their 88’s, they could “put one in your hip pocket.”
As the soldiers trudged closer to Krefeld carrying their worldly possessions on their backs, the Germans took full advantage of the industrial areas on the outskirts of the city to delay the regiment. Company “C” was hit on both flanks as well as from the front by machine gun and artillery fire coming from the steel works and the water tower that flanked each side of the railroad tracks. The Germans, with unobstructed views of the Allies, were protected from observation.
When the Americans crossed the open field, not even a blade of grass sheltered the them from enemy artillery fire. German machine gun bullets flew so close, the men could almost feel the heat coming from the tracers. The blast of the 88mm explosions knocked many of them, including Private Birnbach, onto their faces. But lying in the dirt left the men as vulnerable as sitting ducks, so they rose to their feet and began zigzagging their way back and forth, running for their lives. It didn’t take them long to figure out that the best way to survive was to crouch low, move as fast as their legs would carry them, and alternate between running in a stooped position and crawling like an infant. The company suffered twenty-five casualties within the space of only a few minutes as Birnbach and his comrades watched the blood of their buddies stain the earth.
On March 2nd, the men of Company “C” marched into Krefeld. The absence of white flags signaled that the enemy still lurked. Searching through buildings, air raid shelters, and other possible hiding places for materials of war, they heard over and over from the citizens, “We are not Nazis!” According to Krefeld’s citizens, the Nazis were in the next town over. And the Jews? “There weren’t any Jews in this town.” And no one knew anyone in the German Army.
In a desperate effort to retain their escape route across the Rhine River, German forces began retreating through Krefeld toward the Uerdingen bridge, only seven kilometers from the center of the city.
Nazi soldiers and sympathizers, fearing capture, began disposing of Nazi uniforms, Nazi flags, pictures of Adolf Hitler, and other paraphernalia that would reveal their allegiance to the Reich. As the Americans began their systematic search for deadly weapons and Nazi soldiers posing as civilians, Private Birnbach discovered one of the discarded Nazi flags atop the rubble of a destroyed apartment building.
In a rare photograph taken during the war (infantrymen were prohibited from having cameras), Private Birnbach stood in the Krefeld town square, across from a bombed-out church, and along with one of his buddies, displayed the flag in a testimony to the victory over Naziism.
His barely perceptible smile reflected the mixed emotions of a Jewish soldier holding a symbol of the barbaric atrocities of anti-Semitism. Here was redemption for the deaths of his grandparents, his aunts and uncles, and so many other Jews at the hands of Nazis.
Two months later, the war ended in Europe. Three months after that, World War II ended. Five months later, PFC Birnbach traveled back to the home he had left 21 months before. He never spoke of the roads he traveled from November 1944 to December 1945.
Marvin E. Birnbach wanted to return to Germany, to retrace his steps and see the places he had fought. But he was soon married and his wife, with a hatred for Germans, said she’d never step foot there. He refused to go without her; he never returned. He died in September, 2000.
In going through his papers, I, his eldest daughter, found the black-and-white picture of my father holding the Nazi flag. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Why would a Jewish soldier be photographed holding the emblem of the Third Reich? Turning the picture over, I read the inscription: “Me and O’Brien, Krefeld, March 2, 1945.”
I wondered about that image, about the man who had survived World War II – a young, Jewish soldier, innocent of the horrors of war, fighting on the front lines in a country determined to annihilate his people – hoisting a banner that made me tremble. What had he felt holding that flag? I had no one to ask. My father never shared the story of the picture, nor anything about his path through World War II Germany. His war was a secret he locked inside, never to be revealed.
So in late 2021, when I received an email from one of the descendants of the 102nd Infantry Division, inviting me to join him on a trip to retrace our fathers’ footsteps, I accepted without reservation. This was my chance to connect with the young version of my dad. I would travel a road to understanding.
On March 1, 2022, exactly 77 years later to the day – a day with clear skies and crisp warm-jacket temperatures – four descendants of the 406th regiment stood on that same road in Viersen, Germany and followed the footsteps of Company “C.” We walked the same roads, hiked past the same farmhouses, strolled across the restored bridge over the clear water of the Niers Canal, and marched across the same open field between Anrath and Krefeld. We wondered about the fears our fathers had felt and how they had survived in the face of those fears. We wondered: did snipers abetted by the farmers hide in those farmhouses, or were the farmers kind, perhaps offering water to our fathers?
We walked the path of the long-gone boot tracks of our fathers. And when we finally arrived in Krefeld, we stood in the square where PFC Birnbach had held up his souvenir Nazi flag. We remarked how buildings that had been bombed during the war were beautifully restored. We were treated to a reception by the mayor of Krefeld, commemorating the liberation of their town from the Nazis by the men of Company “C” – men considered heroes by Krefeld civilians.
I stood on that same spot, holding the photograph of my father proudly reflecting his victory over the Nazis. The church had been restored years before. Grass had grown in the square and manicured bushes and flowers lined the area. I tried to imagine how my father felt that day.
Standing there, I cried. I cried for the tragedies of war; I cried tears of thankfulness that I was able to stand in the place my father had wanted to revisit but never did; I cried tears of gratitude that he survived when so many others didn’t and that I was alive because of it; I cried tears of joy that Hitler’s Nazi barbarism was defeated.
As I stood with my feet planted on his footprints, I cried that my father’s vision of a world free of hatred still has not been realized.
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Sarah Birnbach embarked on her encore career as a writer in 2015 after successful careers as an HR management consultant and a family therapist. She has been a sought-after speaker who has conducted more than 500 workshops and presentations. Sarah is a five-time award winner from the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, a program of the National League of American Pen Women. Her stories have appeared in numerous magazines, journals and newspapers. Sarah serves on the board of her local Hadassah chapter, the DC chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, and the Washington Jewish Funeral Practices Committee. She is a member of the National Memoir Association and the Authors Guild and is one of the Jewish Book Council’s 2023-2024 featured authors. Her favorite pastimes are traveling, perusing bookstores, and active grandparenting. Her website is: www.sarahbirnbach.com
© 2024, Sarah Birnbach
Halfway Down the Stairs 