Opinion - Columns - Bill Morem

Published: Thursday, Sep. 17, 2009

Bill Morem: Blackhawks found a home here before and after war

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They drilled by day, jitterbugged by night, and now age is culling their ranks at a clip of more than 1,000 deaths a day. If you’re 83 or older, chances are good you were one of the 16 million men and women of the Greatest Generation who served in World War II. It’s believed these veterans now number less than 3 million, although there’s no real way to know for sure.

I make note of this because a group of these vets, members of the 86th Infantry (Blackhawk) Division, have been in town this week for a reunion. As the last outfit to train at Camp San Luis Obispo before shipping out to Germany in the waning days of the war, a memorial dedication at the base was also on their agenda.

“Counting dependents, widows and kids, we expected around 400 people,” said Los Osos resident Jerry Dietz, treasurer of the 86th Infantry Division Blackhawk Association.

Born in Brooklyn in 1925, Dietz enlisted in the Army in 1943 right after graduating from high school. Because he wasn’t yet 18, he was sent to the Army Specialized Training Reserve program at Syracuse University.

“At 18, I went for basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., with the understanding that we’d be going back to school,” he recalled.

That wasn’t to be the case, though. With two fronts — the European and Pacific theaters — fully engaged, the Army’s need for soldiers put the kibosh on all training programs and re-ordered everyone into the infantry.

Dietz wound up with the 86th Division at Camp Livingston, La., where he trained until early September 1944 before being shipped to Camp Cooke (now Vandenberg Air Force Base) for amphibious training in preparation for an invasion of Japan. The 86th moved on to Camp San Luis Obispo about two weeks later.

In a book called “Black Hawks Over the Danube,” Dietz’s outfit was to undergo “three months of the most advanced warfare training of any outfit in the Army.”

(The book’s spelling of the division’s name as two words varies from the common usage.)

Under the direction of Marines, Dietz and the 86th made amphibious landings at Morro Bay during the day and took in San Luis Obispo when on leave.

San Luis Obispo apparently appealed to the 86th. As “Black Hawks Over the Danube” notes: “The town of San Luis Obispo became a second home for the GI’s of the 86th Division. Although it was not a large city, it had many recreational facilities (not to mention a healthy number of bars) and the Blackhawks received excellent treatment from its citizens … Excellent service club facilities were located in Obispo, and a fleet of limousine-like taxis (probably Steve Zegar’s taxis that carried movie stars to Hearst Castle from the train station) ferried the men back and forth from town in a few minutes.”

The Blackhawks completed their amphibious training in early December 1944 and made preparations to go west.

But the Battle of the Bulge whipsawed their mission and the 86th was shipped to France — in such a hurry, according to Dietz, that the men had to be totally re-outfitted in Le Havre because they’d left everything behind, including their weapons.

Assigned to a communications platoon of 26 men, Dietz carried a radio, worked switchboards and repaired wire as the 86th crossed the Rhine and then forded the Bigge River before liberating a slave labor camp at Attendorn — an action that earned the division recognition by the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Blackhawks’ most intense fighting came in what’s known as the “Ruhr pocket,” and was decisive in the enemy’s defeat, according to historians.

The division eventually hooked up with Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army as it raced to Austria on the belief that the Nazis were planning on making a last stand redoubt in the Alps. Although that didn’t prove out, the Blackhawks did liberate Hungary’s crown jewels in Mattsee, Austria, a day before the war ended on May 5.

In the final tally, the division saw only 34 days of battle, yet it suffered 1,233 casualties and took 53,354 prisoners of war.

Though the Blackhawks may have been the last division in the fight, they were also the first to be redeployed, and this time the 86th Infantry did sail west, getting to the Philippines shortly after the Japanese surrendered. It was the division’s job to mop up pockets of resistance, guard prisoners of war and help train the new Philippine army.

Honorably discharged, Dietz was later awarded a Bronze Star while putting his GI Bill to use at City College of New York as a graduate in electrical engineering, and later earning a master’s degree in industrial engineering from New York University. That foundation led him to a career as an executive with Philco and later as the vice president of engineering with the Singer Co.

Dietz, now 84, and wife Elsie have lived in Los Osos for the past 21 years, immersing themselves in politics and conservation efforts, such as the preservation of the community’s Elfin Forest.

And Dietz continues to pay attention to the Greatest Generation by coordinating reunions and working as a docent with the Central Coast Veterans Memorial Museum, which is downstairs in the Veterans Memorial Building, 801 Grand Ave. in San Luis Obispo. The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

And, as noted, World War II veterans are an endangered species, destined to be a memory within the next 20 years.

With that in mind, Dietz is putting his energy into the Veterans Living History Program, sponsored by the Library of Congress, and is looking for vets in industry, such as Rosie-the-Riveter types, who participated during WWII. If you have a story to tell, contact the museum at 543-1763 and arrange an interview and taping.

Bill Morem can be reached at bmorem@thetribunenews.com or at 781-7852.