Captain Jeff McConnel's Blogblog, a collection of photos, stories of fact, fiction and exaggeration

A return to Dachau after sixty years

C.E. Bill McConnel, a "tech 5" half-track driver first marched into Dachau with the United States Army's 20th Armored Division on April 29, 1945, as a 23 year old soldier. He along with his fellow troops were not prepared for what they would find there, the gruesome results of the longest operating concentration camp in Nazi Germany. A place of forced labor, torture, perverse medical experiments, and mass murder. Scores of railcars piled full of human beings, mostly dead, were discovered to have been recently abandoned by fleeing SS troops at the camp. The liberation of Dachau happened relatively easily with only pockets of resistance by the remaining SS troops, many of which were killed or tortured by their previous "prisoners." After securing the camp, the U.S. Army troops gathered up the remaining SS troops to isolate them from the victims of Dachau. There was a report that one such soldier, after witnessing the atrocity, "lost it" and opened fire with a machine gun killing many guards before he was subdued by his own men. Many Nazi troops had fled into nearby forests as they realized U.S. forces were entering the area.

The prisioners, dazed , with hollow eyes and blank expressions, many weighing sixty pounds or less were slow to realize that the end of this tortured existence was upon them. Indeed many of those who were liberated died soon thereafter from malnutrition or disease, such as typhus. The troops unwittingly had come across a place and time that is now acknowledged as humanity's darkest hour. There were torture chambers, crematoriams, hanging cells and evidence of many who had already been "exterminated." Thousands of victims, Jews, Gypsies, members of the resistance,and countless others not qualifying as "Hitler's master race," remained in the overcrowded barracks, starving. The troops did as best they could to share their limited rations, food, water and even candy, although that proved to be to hard for them to digest after such prolonged starvation.






Sixty years later, as an 83 year old man, Bill McConnel, a Long Beach, California resident since 1961, would once again stand at the very gates to hell that he had gone through to "liberate" . As he opened the wrought iron gate that read, "arbeit macht frei," (work brings freedom), some of those victims from 1945 were to be found inside again, by choice this time, with their sons and daughters, grandsons and grandaughters and a dozen or so U.S. Army soldiers there to memorialize those that perished there. They were there to "never forget," or let happen again, man's inhumanity to man. Hundreds of people from countries all over the globe gathered together on this warm sunny spring day. Sixty years ago on this day, winter still hung over the camp, cold and miserable in so many ways.

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This was also a day when many of the surviving victims and their families would meet their liberators for the first time. Emotional and tearful reunions occured spontaneously as strangers would approach the U.S. Army veterans, many proudly wearing hats that identified them with their divisions. "Another two days and I would have been dead." "If you had not arrived when you did, I, nor any of my familiy would be here now." "You liberated my father, he has since passed, but I am here to thank you." Tears of sadness, thanks, and joy were found streaming down so many cheeks. One question asked of the soldiers by so many victims was, "Do you know when you arrived at Dachau?". Most G.I.'s didn't recall, morning, afternoon, they just weren't sure. Not the victims, they knew exactly, 5:15PM! The survivors never forgot that time. The "reluctant heros," the liberators don't believe they are heros. They felt that they were just doing the job they were supposed to for "God and country." For many soldiers it was quite overwhelming to see the results of a job "well done," so long ago. To the survivors, their families and all the rest of us, they are seen as heros and history will tell of this forever.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to the many thousands of heros who risked their lives sixty years ago, ending the facism, tyranny, oppression and cruelty of Nazi Germany.

Bill McConnel was accompanied by his wife, Betty, sons, Jeff and Jon for the memorial gatherings in Munich and Dachau. His eldest son, Tom, a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot, now flying Hueys for the California Division of Forestry was unable to attend due to work scheduling.
Post Script: Bill McConnel died in April of 2006 at the age of 84.