Robert H. Hirschauer
Sarah Smith
Mr. Thomas
U.S. History H, Period 2
26 April 2006
Personal Interview with Robert H. Hirschauer
I interviewed Robert H. Hirschauer, a World War II veteran, on the afternoon of Saturday April 22, 2006. Hirschauer is a family friend who used to work with my father. Hirschauer served in Europe as part of the finance unit during the war.
Q: What years were you involved in the military?
A: From 1943 to 1946.
Q: Where were you stationed?
A: “…I left from Boston and went over on the Aquatania, wentdown to Bermuda, crossed the Atlantic and landed in Scotland. From Scotland, I went to Win Shopshire in England, then to France, and then to Brussels, Belgium. We set up our unit in Brussels and discovered a bank with only German supplies, but we could not use any of it. We then moved on to the other side of Liege, and we were about forty to forty-five miles from the Battle of the Bulge.
Q: What did you do there?
A: When Patton was going across the country, they gave the guys RR, which is Rest and Relaxation. The men would go to the hospital and then to us. We’d give them partial pay, then they’d go have a blast.
Over there, the Germans were dropping v1s and v2s. You could hear the v1s coming and when they did, we dove underneath the bed…the v2s came much faster. Once, my friend and me were set up in a nice hotel, and we heard one coming. We dove underneath the bed. It blew up three blocks from us, blew out our blackout drapes…and the windows hit the other side of the room.
Q: Why were you not in combat?
A: Because of my eyes. I was in the finance unit. If I hadn’t been an accountant, I would have been in the medical unit. They were taking everyone they could take. If you could walk, they’d take you.
Q: What did the finance unit do?
A: After the war had capitulated, they sent people to get checked out, would give them some money, and then send them back to the U.S.
Q: How did the economy affect you?
A: The economy didn’t bother us because we had PX…we could buy a whole carton of almost any kind of cigarettes for like a quarter, a pack was a nickel. At home, it was a dime…we didn’t have to pay tax.
For everything that is said about the Red Cross, I liked the Salvation Army more. We were always receiving things from them.
It was illegal to own U.S. dollars or British pounds…if you did not turn it in, you would be court marshaled. One man who had been a POW for one and a half years had money he had been given by Russians. I told him to keep it, he deserved it. We later found at that it was probably counterfeit, because the Germans had counterfeited a lot of our money.