Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:22 | Bobby Eberhardt was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and at the age of 18 was instantly drafted, along with many other 18 year olds in America. His brother was already in the Army before him, and he got to see him come home before he himself went overseas. He went to Camp Wheeler in Georgia for training, and goes into detail about different accidents and even some deaths during that training.
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While in training, Eberhardt remembers that a lot of it was specifically designed to teach the new recruits how to kill their targets. He went over to Germany, where he was assigned to prison guard duty right outside of Giesen, Germany.
Eberhardt gives specifics about the jobs he had on guard duty at the Giesen prison camp, and the mostly pleasant interactions he had with prisoners. He would trade cigarettes with some of them in exchange for handcrafted items. He also talks about some of the places he slept in during that time.
Eberhardt remembers still being in Germany during the Nuremberg trials, in which he was assigned a job of taking prisoner's papers to Frankfurt for further criminal inspection. He was discharged in November 1946, and came back to the United States shortly after. From there he joined the National Guard. He gives a bit more detail about his brother's service overseas before him.
