[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 22]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 30450-30453]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       HONORING THE BRAVERY OF WORLD WAR II VETERAN BERNARD RADER

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOHN B. LARSON

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 7, 2007

  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Mr. Bernard 
Rader, a true American hero who valiantly served this country in World 
War II. Today and everyday, we owe members of our military--soldiers 
like

[[Page 30451]]

Bernard Rader and so many of his generation who faced grave danger in 
order to restore freedom and preserve the dignity of mankind, our 
sincerest debt of gratitude.
  I had the privilege to first meet Mr. Rader in Normandy, France in 
2004, on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. It was then that I 
first learned of this man's extraordinary story of survival and 
heroism. A Private First Class with the 30lst Regiment of the 94th 
Infantry Division, his unit was ambushed and forced to surrender to the 
Nazis in October 1944. As a Jewish soldier, he feared his fate as a 
prisoner of war. Surviving his imprisonment, Bernard was returned to 
the Allied forces in one of the few prisoner exchanges to take place 
between the Germans and Americans during World War II.
  For service to his country and in recognition of his combat wounds, 
Bernard received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. On November 6, 
2007, Bernard was personally thanked by French President Nicolas 
Sarkozy and awarded the Legion of Honor, in recognition of his 
sacrifice for the Liberation of France. I join the many in honoring 
Bernard Rader--this Nation remains indebted to his service.
  Madame Speaker, I would like to offer Bernard Rader's powerful and 
personal story for the Congressional Record. I am submitting ``The 
Ambush'', an article published in the Hartford Courant, which 
chronicles Bernard's war experience and faithful return to France with 
his family 60 years later, as described by his son Robert Rader--who 
I'm proud to note is from Connecticut's First Congressional District. I 
urge my colleagues to join me in thanking Mr. Bernard Rader for his 
service to this nation and for sharing his heroic story with all of 
America.

               [From the Hartford Courant, July 25, 2004]

                               The Ambush

                          (By Robert J. Rader)

       Dad and the two other veterans strained to pick out their 
     comrades from the pictures of basic training at Fort McCain. 
     ``Remember this one? What was his name?'' Their eyes, now 60 
     years older, strained at the fuzzy prints. ``Have you heard 
     from Higgins or Schulman or Boyd recently?'' We were on a 
     ferry from Lorient, on the western coast of France, to Ile de 
     Groix. During World War II, the port of Lorient remained in 
     Nazi hands till the day after Germany had surrendered. All 
     three men had been imprisoned by the Nazis after being 
     captured in an ambush in October 1944: two of them were held 
     on the Ile de Groix, the third--Dad--on the mainland. The 
     boat glided swiftly across the water. The day was overcast, 
     with mist rising from the sea, but the sun would soon burn 
     the mist off and, as we reached the island, break through. 
     The three veterans--my father, Bernard I. Rader; Kermit 
     Harden; and Bob Moore--sat on benches in the cabin and talked 
     about the men who died. They remembered the food the French 
     people sneaked to them at a time when few had much to feed 
     their own families. And they talked about the young American 
     Red Cross officer, Andrew Gerow Hodges, who had braved 
     getting shot by mistake, either by the Germans or the 
     Americans, to arrange one of the few prisoner exchanges on 
     the Western Front in World War II. They dubbed their trip 
     ``The Andrew Gerow Hodges Tour.''
       The ferry nosed past a massive cement building that still 
     contained submarine pens. The low-slung building, several 
     football fields in size, had been built with walls 20 feet 
     thick to withstand heavy Allied bombing. The weather-beaten 
     structure was a monument to the slave labor that had 
     struggled to build it with wartime speed.
       This would probably be the last time the three veterans, 
     all over 80, would make this trip to visit the countryside 
     where their young lives had taken such a crucial turn. Many 
     of their buddies who had wanted to come could not. Hodges was 
     not in good enough health to make the trip. They would see 
     the site of the ambush, where their patrol had come under 
     fire and their comrades had been slain, and the places where 
     they had been held prisoner. They would thank the French 
     people for the help they gave them. They would converse again 
     with the people of Ile de Groix, and leave a plaque 
     expressing their thanks on the wall to the entrance of Fort 
     Surville on the island, where Harden and Moore had been 
     imprisoned for 47 days in 1944. They wanted to pay tribute to 
     their five friends killed in the ambush by visiting the 
     cemetery at St. James, where they rest forever. And they 
     wanted to honor Hodges--without whom, they believe, they 
     would not be alive today. They wanted to tell the story of 
     what happened so many years ago and how he came to get them 
     out. With those goals in mind, the three veterans and their 
     wives and children had come back to Brittany. We family 
     members listened as the men recounted their war experiences, 
     as soldiers have done since long before World War II. Many 
     veterans of that war, who are now dying off at the rate of 
     over 1,000 a day, never talked to their families about what 
     they had gone through. But Dad did not shy from discussing 
     his war experiences. He watched World War II movies with 
     interest (we knew if there was a swastika on the cover of a 
     videotape we'd rented, he'd be interested), and, despite the 
     stroke he suffered in 1999, has spoken at libraries, schools 
     and other sites, telling his story and encouraging other 
     veterans to tell theirs. Mom has been his main support, 
     helping him in every way with these ``gigs'' and explaining 
     what had happened when Dad could not find the words.
       Dad was trained as an infantryman and made private first 
     class by the time he shipped out to England on Aug. 6, 1944. 
     After further training, his unit sailed on a Liberty ship for 
     France, came ashore at Utah Beach on Sept. 3 and marched to 
     Brittany. He served as a sentry there, helping to keep the 
     Germans contained while the Allies pushed through France to 
     Germany following the D-Day invasion. On the October day he 
     and his unit set out on patrol, only to be ambushed and 
     captured, he tasted combat for the first time. Dad began 
     reacquainting himself with old buddies over the past few 
     years, as he became more proficient than we ever thought he 
     would be at email. He got in touch with a number of those who 
     had been in his company and was contacted by others after I 
     wrote up his story and posted it on the 94th Infantry 
     Division's web site. I thought it was important for me to 
     share this one last, great adventure with my parents. Curious 
     about the war, and an amateur historian, I knew I had to tag 
     along.
       I expected that this would be an emotional trip. It did not 
     disappoint. The ferry landed in the harbor at Ile de Groix, 
     about five miles from Lorient. On this beautiful, green 
     island the Germans had set up artillery to protect their 
     position in the port. They had also set up a prison for 
     captured soldiers. It is hard to believe that such a 
     picturesque place would be ideal for a prison. But its 
     remoteness from Allied troops, together with its closeness to 
     the fortified mainland city, made it a perfect location for a 
     prison, with virtually no opportunity for escape. The island 
     had a far different mood on May 26 of this year, when our 
     little tourist group boarded a bus to travel to a lane out in 
     the country. The unpaved road, bordered by fields where 
     flowers grew wild, had been renamed in honor of the 94th 
     Infantry Division when Dad and some other veterans came here 
     four years ago.
       Our group of veterans and their families were joined by 
     about 30 town officials, journalists, former members of the 
     French Resistance and others. We walked about 100 yards down 
     the lane and came to an area with ancient, weather-beaten 
     walls on both sides. Ahead was the entrance to Fort Surville: 
     a narrow archway the prisoners had been marched through 60 
     years ago. On one wall we noticed an American flag covering 
     something on the wall. Strangely, it had 36 stars. The mayor 
     explained that the flag had been sewn in 1944 by a 
     Frenchwoman, whose daughter now joined us. It was to show 
     support for what she hoped would be the eventual liberation 
     of the island by the Americans. It was kept in the chimney of 
     the house where the woman lived. She had no access to a real 
     American flag, so had guessed at the number of stars. When a 
     German was in her house and asked her what the colorful cloth 
     was doing in the chimney, she said that it was used, like 
     paper, to wrap meats that were being cured. Had the Germans 
     known the truth about what she had done, she would certainly 
     have been punished. The mayor made a speech, the first of 
     many we would hear, extolling the amity between the French 
     and American people. He gave thanks for what these soldiers 
     had done in helping to liberate France. He then reached up 
     and gently pulled the flag down, exposing the plaque the 
     veterans had donated, and warmly presented the flag to the 
     three veterans. They accepted it with some reservation. Their 
     first thought was that it was such a wonderful work by an Ile 
     de Groix citizen that it should stay on the island. But 
     rather than taking a chance of insulting their hosts, they 
     decided to bring it home and exhibit it in the Museum of the 
     94th Infantry at Fort Devens, Mass.
       It was then the turn of the three veterans. They, too, 
     talked about the friendship and love of Americans and the 
     French. And they dedicated the plaque, which they had paid 
     for and which my family designed and had made in France. It 
     was black with gold letters, written in English, French and 
     Breton, the language of the region. It was for those who had 
     helped them by giving them apples, eggs and potatoes 
     surreptitiously while they were held on this island. It read: 
     ``To the people of Ile de Groix, who gave us so much, when 
     they themselves had so little. Company K, 301st Regiment, 
     94th Infantry Division.''
       The outpouring of love on both sides struck me as being in 
     sharp contrast to what I had been hearing about the French 
     and Americans since the U.S. decided to invade Iraq. We were 
     feted no fewer than six times by representatives of local 
     French governments. While I heard criticism of President 
     Bush, there was no doubt in my mind that there still existed 
     a love for the people who had returned freedom to them in 
     1944 and 1945. It seemed to me that we in the United States 
     seemed to be quick to answer French policy on Iraq with 
     mockery (remember ``Liberty fries?''), while the French 
     people I met were gentle in counseling us about Iraq. As 
     citizens of a country that has had its own

[[Page 30452]]

     problems fighting guerrilla wars in Vietnam and Algeria, they 
     made their opinions known with a sense of deja vu. While 
     Americans remember that we helped save France in World War 
     II, maybe we forget that it was France that saved George 
     Washington and the American rebels during our Revolution.
       The many receptions we attended all featured champagne, 
     some food (from a few crackers and cookies to a three-hour 
     marathon lunch) and many local government officials. I found 
     it great fun, especially trying to use my high school French 
     to converse with the inevitably non-English-speaking people 
     who would sit with us. I joked with my parents about how the 
     French seemed to have such trouble understanding their own 
     native language. We began to joke that certainly there would 
     not be a day without a local reception and a picture in the 
     local French newspaper of the three ancient combatants the 
     next day. And believe me, we kidded the vets about being 
     ``ancient combatants'' many times.
       Dad had been held in the hospital in Lorient because of his 
     wounds. We rose early one morning to visit it. Lorient held a 
     key submarine facility for the Germans and was considered, 
     along with two other ports, so hard to capture that the 
     Allies contained it, instead of attacking it, from 1944 until 
     1945. The submarine pens were bombed without effect, so the 
     Allies decided to make the city as uninhabitable as possible 
     for the Germans. Their planes dropped 250,000 incendiary 
     bombs on the city, destroying 90 percent of it. A young, 
     pony-tailed French hospital worker gave us a tour of the 
     bunker the Nazis built on the grounds of the facility to 
     protect injured German soldiers and sailors. He then brought 
     us up to the second floor of the hospital, where Dad, who had 
     been hit by a concussion shell, had been nursed back to 
     health. Because the hospital was being modernized, the wing 
     where he had been held was empty of patients. The rooms were 
     bare, but clean and painted in dull, institutional colors. It 
     took awhile for Dad to recognize the room he had been held in 
     so many years ago, but at last he did, and when he looked out 
     the window, his memories flooded back. He remembered, he 
     said, that the Germans were all around and that he couldn't 
     leave the second floor. Outside there were more German 
     soldiers, but there was also a Frenchwoman who saw him 
     looking out the window. She must have known he was a 
     prisoner, because she cupped her left hand and on it, with 
     the fingers of her right, drew the Cross of Lorraine, the 
     symbol of the Free French. It was a sign to my father that he 
     and the handful of prisoners in the hospital were not alone. 
     As he said, when he thanked the Lorient officials for their 
     reception, that woman had given him something as important as 
     food: She had given him hope.
       I get chills when I hear that story. I imagine Dad, a 
     wounded 20-year-old, unsure of what the future would bring, 
     lying in a hospital, surrounded by Nazi soldiers. During the 
     ambush, he had taken off his dog tags and his friend, George 
     Boyd, had buried them, since they identified Dad as a Jew. In 
     the hospital, he kept a picture of Jesus above his bed and 
     was careful never to reveal his religion. That afternoon, we 
     drove out to the town of Etel, which sits at the mouth of the 
     Etel River, which back in 1944 was on the front line between 
     the Allies and Germans. It was here that the exchanges of 
     prisoners took place. The veterans again told the story of 
     what had happened. Allied prisoners held by the Germans had 
     gotten word through to U.S. forces that they had nothing to 
     eat. According to a Red Cross account, the 94th Infantry's 
     commanding general asked Hodges to see about getting supplies 
     to the POWs. Hodges began making regular trips across German 
     lines. Though he was under the Red Cross flag, he was often 
     at risk of being shot by one side or another. He finally 
     realized a prisoner exchange would make more sense. To his 
     surprise, the Germans agreed. Allied commanders agreed, and 
     on the morning of Nov. 17, the first exchange began. 
     Eventually 147 soldiers were swapped in four exchanges, on a 
     one-to-one basis, with men of equal rank. The Germans refused 
     to turn over one British officer who had escaped several 
     times. They wanted five German soldiers with Iron Cross 
     decorations in return. Hodges then asked the Germans, ``If 
     you are such good military men, how could one British officer 
     be worth five of yours?'' After banging on the table, the 
     German officer relented. We have photographs of Dad being 
     exchanged and old, yellowed newspaper clippings announcing 
     the event. I had always imagined the exchange in black and 
     white, as in the photos, with the ``jollyboat'' carrying 10 
     men at a time going back and forth across the river. But, 
     now, in Etel, where the water was blue and the dock cement-
     yellow, I imagined my Dad moving from black and white into 
     color. Though his wounds were mostly healed, he was on a 
     stretcher because he had gotten the flu a few days before; he 
     was coming back to the American side, no longer a prisoner. 
     He was overjoyed and his future was again before him, in all 
     the colors you can imagine.
       There is no way to repay the debt Dad feels to Hodges. What 
     can you give to a man who has saved you from the very depths 
     of misery and the verge of starvation and found a way to 
     bring you back to the full color of life? Dad believes that 
     the way to repay him in part is to tell the story of Hodges' 
     courage. And he does: to newspaper reporters, to kids at 
     schools, to people interested in what happened during the war 
     and even to some people who made the mistake of sitting next 
     to us at an Indian restaurant that night. The next day we 
     headed out, on a rented bus, to where the ambush happened. We 
     were led by Frank Perammant, a Frenchman who was 14 years old 
     at the time of the ambush and befriended a number of the 
     American soldiers because he wanted to learn English. He 
     remembers them going out on patrol on the cool, crisp morning 
     of Oct. 2, 1944, because they walked right by his home. Our 
     bus first stopped on the side of the road, and Perammant led 
     us over to a plaque mounted on a stone wall marking where an 
     American lookout had been killed a few days before the 
     ambush. As he explained what had happened there, we walked 
     along the side of a house and along a fence, where he said 
     the American soldiers had come from. And then we drove 
     perhaps a quarter-mile down the road to the ambush site, in 
     the tiny hamlet of Kerdudal. As we got off the bus and the 
     veterans looked around, the questions started: ``Where were 
     the Germans? Where were their lines? What direction were you 
     coming from?'' Back in October 1944, the Americans, who were 
     containing the Germans in the Lorient ``pocket,'' heard there 
     were a number of Germans interested in giving themselves up. 
     They set out, about 50 of them, walking through country 
     crisscrossed by hedgerows--ridges 6 feet high topped by 
     thick, virtually impassable hedges. As they walk forward, 
     disaster strikes: A scout is shot at the beginning of the 
     line and the patrol comes under heavy attack. As the 
     Americans are driven back, Dad bandages the leg of a wounded 
     Free French lieutenant and drags him 500 yards to a road 
     bounded by two high hedgerows, where the Germans cut off 
     their retreat and pin them down with automatic weapons fire. 
     The men fight for six hours as the Nazis pound them with 88s, 
     mortars, machine guns, grenades and rifle fire. The Americans 
     call in artillery, but the fighting is so close that they are 
     hit by the friendly fire. They find out later they are 
     outnumbered 12 to 1.
       About 3 p.m., Dad sees a concussion mortar shell land 50 
     yards away, right in the center of the road they are in. The 
     next falls 25 yards away, and he knows he will be hit by the 
     third. It throws him like a rag doll to the ground. He's 
     helpless and bleeding from shrapnel wounds in his legs, hands 
     and right arm. He is in shock, not knowing if he'll live or 
     die, and, the fight blasted out of him, spends the next two 
     hours of the battle lying on the side of the road. As I stand 
     by the side of the road, I imagine I am in the scene. I hear 
     myself call out to this 20-year-old kid, numb and wounded and 
     lying on the ground, ``Hey, you'll be OK, this will work out, 
     hang in there--you'll make it!'' I tell him that he'll live 
     many more years and have a wonderful family and 
     grandchildren. As though I am the father, I shout expressions 
     of love and hope to this helpless boy lying there motionless. 
     By 5 p.m. it's clear reinforcements can't break through, and 
     those who can still fight are out of ammunition. One soldier 
     puts a white bandage over his rifle to signify surrender. He 
     stands up and raises the rifle. A German machine-gunner 
     apparently does not realize that he is trying to give up and 
     he fires. The American is cut in two. Finally, the Germans 
     understand and the Americans surrender. The Germans take the 
     Americans into captivity, with Dad in a wheelbarrow pushed by 
     his friend, George Boyd.
       Two months later, Dad would write a detailed account of the 
     battle in a letter to his parents and sister Gloria. He 
     described the aftermath this way: ``It doesn't matter much 
     but we caused the enemy nearly four times our number 
     casualties . . . The Germans themselves respected us to the 
     extent of not searching us for weapons (taking our words for 
     it) and not forcing us to hold our hands up, telling us we 
     were too good a bunch of fighters to be shamed in such a way. 
     I don't know for sure if I killed and I don't want to. It's 
     hard to write because I hate to remember but I know you want 
     to know just what happened. . . .'' As I return to real life 
     in 2004, the three veterans can't tell exactly where they 
     were during the ambush. Perammant pointed out it was here the 
     first shots were fired. The vets were not so sure. The land 
     has changed. There are no more hedgerows; they were flattened 
     out over 60 years ago by farmers who decided that flat land 
     was easier to farm. Trees had grown where before there were 
     none. A few old houses were still there, maybe the only 
     surviving objects that could bear witness. A French couple, 
     working in their ever-so-peaceful garden, were kind as they 
     listened to the story, and said they thought the dirt road 
     they pointed out was the one on which the men were led away. 
     We walked down this cart path, retracing, the veterans trying 
     to remember. There are no battle markers here; the only other 
     thread to the past is the recollection of the three men. The 
     story they tell about the ambush is what makes it real. A 
     half an hour later, we're sipping hot chocolates and Cokes at 
     a little cafe as if what happened on this land 60 years ago 
     was ancient history. But something in me has been deeply 
     touched by seeing where this pivotal event in Dad's life had 
     happened.

[[Page 30453]]

       As I sit in my hotel room and think about why I am so 
     touched by this ordinary piece of French countryside, I 
     realize that seeing the ambush site somehow connected me to 
     my father on a new emotional level. I feel I have come face 
     to face with Dad as he was 60 years ago, when he went through 
     the worst experience of his life. In some almost mystical 
     way, seeing him at the ambush site, at the hospital and at 
     the scene of the exchange made my view of him and my 
     connection to him more complete than anything I had ever 
     experienced. And it gave me a view of my family history more 
     alive than it had been in the stories I have heard since I 
     was a child. Returning with him to Brittany wasn't about 
     glorifying war; it was more about sharing a part of the most 
     frightening moments in his life in a way that was so real, so 
     close. It was like reliving a part of his life through his 
     eyes. They were now not just heroic tales of days long ago; 
     they were as recent and real as the reports we see on the 6 
     o'clock news. I've often heard that men fight battles not for 
     their countries or for apple pie. When they are in a foxhole 
     or pinned down in a hedgerow, they fight for themselves and 
     their buddies. When they are gone, buried in a foreign land, 
     who remembers them? Their parents have long since passed 
     away. Their wives or sweethearts have moved on to others. And 
     life has continued.
       So the veterans thought it important to say goodbye to 
     their buddies who died in the ambush in Kerdudal. We drove to 
     the Brittany American Cemetery and Memorial in St. James, a 
     beautiful burial ground, smaller than the more famous one 
     overlooking Omaha Beach, but just as well-kept. On a 
     beautiful spring day, we walked among the too-many crosses 
     and stars of David until the veterans found the graves of the 
     five men to whom they had come to pay their respects. They 
     stopped next to the cross over the grave of the soldier 
     killed when attempting to surrender during the ambush. In the 
     quiet, as we watched, they each stood on one side of the 
     cross and Kermit read a prayer written by the soldier's 
     brother-in-law. The haunting, final sound of Taps was heard 
     across the cemetery as the veterans stood with their hands 
     over their hearts. And tears ran down Dad's face. The 
     veterans remembered this man, as they remembered all the men 
     who had died that day in October. Each buried comrade was a 
     real person with dreams and emotions and, they thought, their 
     whole lives to look forward to. Each was more than just one 
     of the thousands of crosses and stars of David planted in 
     straight rows in the American cemeteries in Europe.
       Dad has wondered aloud to me why he lived when his friends 
     did not. Why could he come home and they lie in the 
     cemeteries of France? There's no answer to these questions. 
     Maybe it was luck; maybe fate or God intervened. But surely 
     it was important for him to say goodbye one last time and to 
     remember. I watched him as he stood with his eyes closed and 
     wiping the tears from his face. Maybe it is just an automatic 
     human reaction, but I felt my own chest tightening and the 
     tears welling up in my eyes, too. But it was not only for the 
     men we were honoring that I found myself choking up.
       It was also for Dad and what he had done. He had survived 
     the intervening decades and now, at an age when so many of 
     his colleagues won't attempt much more than a trip to the 
     supermarket, he had accomplished the four goals he had when 
     he had set out: he had seen the land again; he had thanked 
     the French people; he had said goodbye to his friends; and he 
     had honored Hodges.
       While the trip was not over, for Dad, the journey was 
     complete. Mom and I were so very proud of him. For me, it was 
     a trip of a lifetime. I had relived the worst day of Dad's 
     life, in Kerdudal, and the best, in Etel. I had seen what he 
     had gone through in a way that no book and no movie could 
     ever recreate. I also had learned again from Dad how to thank 
     those who had served at a time of need, to honor those who 
     have fallen for our country and for those who showed 
     tremendous bravery in helping their fellow men.
       This journey to the past was a gift from my father. For an 
     instant, he gave me the ability to touch the past and see him 
     and these places as they once were. I could relive with my 
     Dad that time of his life when he was young and strong and 
     thought he was invincible. That is a gift few sons ever get 
     to share with their fathers. I will always be grateful that I 
     had that chance.

                          ____________________