SECOND LIEUTENANT FREDERICK A. GRUBER

I have had the pleasure of knowing Mike Gruber for about five years now. He is our maintenance supervisor where I work Over the last few days and weeks I have come to learn a little about his family. Mike has both German and Italian heritage and is originally from Melrose Park Illinois. His Italian side is pretty colorful. Mike's 2nd cousin was Joey Aiuppa who was part of the Capone organization. As a young man he drove for Al Capone. Aiuppa also had ties to John Dillinger and the Karpis gangs. He may have been involved in the death of Sam Giancana and would take over as the head of the Chicago mob after his death. In 1986 Aiuppa was sentenced to 28 years in prison and fined 80,000 dollars for a scheme to skim millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos. After serving nearly ten years he was released for health reasons in 1996 and died at the age of 89 in February 1987. Mike's recollections of his cousin sounds like scenes from the Godfather when they attended family gatherings Mikes father died young and his widowed mother resisted the urge to ask her cousin Joey for favors. That changed, however; when Mike's younger brother got into some pretty serious trouble with the law. Mikes mom approached Aiuppa for help. One day two large, well dressed men wearing dark sunglasses showed up at her door and asked Mikes mom numerous questions. When Mike's brother appeared in court he found that all charges had been dismissed.

Joey Aiuppa

In May 1971 Mike was in Navy boot camp when he received word that his father had passed away suddenly of a heart attack. Mike received a hardship discharge and was unable to return to the Navy. His father was a real American hero. Frederick A. Gruber was born April 1922 and died way too soon in May 1971. Fred was drafted into the U.S. Army late in 1942 as a Private and would eventually rise to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. He was inducted at Camp Forrest in Tullahoma Tennessee where my own father was inducted in 1944. Fred served at various stateside bases such as Fort Bragg and Fort Sill. Eventually he would be attached as an artillery officer with the 8th Infantry Division. His unit would land at Utah Beach on July 4th 1944 and would go into combat on July 7th. The 8th fought through the tough hedgerow country of France and crossed the Ay River on the 26th. It pushed through Renne's France on August 8th and attacked Brest in September. By September 19th the Division had cleared the Crozon Peninsula and drove across France to Luxembourg. From there it moved into the Hurtgen Forest. There were a series of bloody battles fought here between September 19th and December 16th 1944. It would be the longest battle fought on German soil. The Germans fiercely defended this area because it would serve as a staging area for the battle of the Bulge which would begin on December 16th. The Division would push on and cross the Roer River on February 23, 1945. The 8th reached the Rhine River on March 7th and it drove across the Elbe on May 1st. The war would end on May 7, 1945, just a few days later.

The 8th infantry patch

The 8th Infantry in Normandy

The 8th Infantry in the Hurtgen Forrest

Wobbelin concentration camp

Fred Gruber would also be involved in the liberation of the Neuengamme concentration camp Wobbelin subcamp, near the city Ludwigslust. The SS established Wobbelin in early February 1945 to house concentration camp prisoners who had been evacuated from other camps to keep them from being liberated by Allied troops. Wobbelin had some 5,000 inmates which were starving and disease ridden when the 8th Infantry Division arrived. There was little food and water and some prisoners had resorted to cannibalism. Two hundred inmates died in the week following their liberation.The 8th Infantry has been recognized as the liberating unit by both the U.S. Army and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988. Mikes father had pictures of dead bodies stacked in piles. The following is a letter that Fred wrote his parents just two days after the end of the war in Europe. I am copying the letter as written.

Thursday, May 10, 1945
Germany

Dear Mom & Dad

Well the war is all over now and from now on it'll just be a vacation and you don't have to worry anymore. Although the war officially ended the 8th it actually ended the 2nd for us. Everybody here took the surrender calmly. No wild parties although we have all the wine and champagne we want to drink. Right now we're in Schwerin a little east of Hamburg. Today is Accension Day and I went to Mass. Next Sunday is Mothers Day and I'll try to go to Mass and Communion.

The other day I saw something which alone made this whole war worth fighting. It was a German concentration camp about 30 miles from here, only a small camp. In it there were the bodies of 400 to 500 Russians, Poles, and French. They had all been starved, beaten, or shot to death. Everyone of them was practically a skeleton. They lived in building with dirt floor and no toilet and the floor was filthy. Food they were eating was still laying by their bodies. They had something like sugar beets which the farmers here in Europe feed to horses & cows, potato peeling, and a little corn with straw chopped up about a quarter of an inch long which they cooked. There in the woods in back of the camp they had they're burying pits. There were about 100 bodies to a burial pit. Here the army was making the German civilians exhume the bodies which could be seen were only buried 2 or 3 days before. They also made all the German civilians, women and all in the vicinity go through the camp. As the civilians pulled the bodies out of the pits you could see where some had been shot and others with their hands tied behind their back had been clubbed to death. A 100 ladies are being reburied in each town around here so that the people won't forget. I never actually believed it when I read it in the newspapers or heard about it over the radio, but now I've seen it myself. I wonder what those big concentration camps must be.

I'm sending some pictures and negatives. The two other fellows are the pilot that flew the two planes. The one negative is me beside an ME-109 but the guy cut my head off. Well thats about all for now. Take it easy and don't work hard. Until later, lots of kisses.

Love
Fred

The 8th Infantry Division spent 266 days in combat. Total casualties were 13,986 and of that number 2,852 were killed in combat. They fought in four campaigns and earned five unit citations. Like most combat veterans Mike said that his father rarely talked about the war and he was only 19 when he died. Mike has a treasure trove of letters that his father wrote to his parents both stateside and from overseas, and pictures of his father during his military service. He also has a letter telling of earning the Army Air medal and being awarded four battle stars for Schwerin Falls, the capture of Hurtgen, crossing the Rhine and crossing the Elbe. Mikes father brought home a German helmet and a nine millimeter Belgian pistol with a German Army stamp. World War Two veterans are now in their nineties and older. They are dying off every day. Soon there will be no one left that were eyewitnesses to their bravery. It is our responsibility to keep their memory alive and it is my honor to tell the story of Mikes father 2nd Lieutenant Frederick A. Gruber.