Vets' stories bequeathed to history via student interviews

Interviews will be videotaped and shared with family members,

historical societies and libraries

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Ruth Berndt still remembers the day the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan more than 60 years ago.

The oldest veteran in Brown County who still has her dog tags to prove it and the granddaughter of Hermann Monument designer Julius Berndt, she served as a nurse at a hospital near Manila in the Philippines.

Berndt was more than 1,600 miles away when the Japanese cities were destroyed in August of 1945. She described what it was like when the bombs were dropped.

"All the hospital windows broke," Berndt said. "We didn't know what it was at the time. It was such a big secret at first."

She was interviewed Monday by Kellie Dunn's New Ulm High School freshmen history class students Scott Hawkins and Zevlen Wolner as part of a Veteran History Project.

The program was initiated by the Brown County Veteran's Council, the Brown County Historical Society and local veterans organizations.

During October, Dunn's students will interview World War II and home front family members of Brown County veterans about their military service and family life during the war.

Additional interviews of Korean, Vietnam and Gulf War veterans and family members will be conducted by volunteers through the Veteran's Council and Historical Society.

In the interest of preservation of wartime history for future generations, the interviews will be videotaped. Copies will be made for the veteran or their family, Brown County libraries and copies sent to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Berndt worked as a nurse for 14 years at Ancker Hospital in St. Paul before joining the Army in 1942 through an American Red Cross program. Her first duty station was in Wyoming. A couple months later, she got orders to ride a former passenger ship converted to a troop transport.

In order to avoid Japanese submarines, the ship that sailed without a convoy of other ships, zig-zagged across the ocean for three weeks before docking in Brisbane, Australia.

Berndt was pleasantly surprised when she was transferred to the 116th Station Hospital on a mountain near Port Moresby, New Guinea. There, nurses found a large, newly-built "house" with mosquito netting around cots to keep mosquitoes away to prevent malaria. Despite 110-degree temperatures, nurses wore tight-fitting clothing in order to deter mosquitoes.

The first morning she was there, Berndt got one of biggest surprises of her life. At breakfast, she happened to sit across a table from Army nurse Arlene Skinner, formerly of New Ulm.

Sixty years later, many of the nurses still communicate with each other, Berndt added.

Berndt never was in the middle of any warfare, other than a few alerts when she put her helmet on and ran to patient wards. She tended to many soldiers that were wounded or suffering from tropical diseases.

Nurses and soldiers had to be careful of a number of things in New Guinea. If they left anything on the floor or low to the ground, it was in danger of being washed away from heavy rains.

Berndt served at Hollandia, Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters near Manila where soldier tents had tin roofs and were lined on the bottom and sides. She recalled seeing much of the U.S. Pacific fleet staging in Manila Bay.

Six months after getting an Army discharge not long after the atom bombs were dropped on Japan, Berndt was recalled to active duty and served in Japan.

Her final stateside duty stations included Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.; Fort Meade, Maryland; Long Beach, Ca. Naval Hospital and an Army hospital in Heidelberg, Germany.

Berndt retired from nursing more than 30 years ago after many years as a night supervisor at Union Hospital in New Ulm.

For more information on veteran's interviews, call Brown County Veteran's Service Officer Greg Peterson at 233-6637.

(Fritz Busch can be reached at fbusch@nujournal.com).