OCR Text |
Show Pfc Harvey NateHiees First American to Land in Berlin Uintah Basin Red Skinned Hero of U. S. Army, First American Soldier to Enter Center of Berlin DRIVES CORRESPONDENT TO HITLER'S REIGHSGHANCELLERY Harvey, Veteran of Second Armored (Hell On Wheels) Division of the American Army Wears a Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart With Oak Leaf Cluster Coming Home! BERLIN The veteran second armored (hell on wheels) di vision of the American army deployed in the suburbs and the first American soldier entered the Russian-held center of Berlin Tuesday, Tues-day, July 3. A red-skinned hero of the U S Army jeeped down Unier den Linden and women wept with joy at the sight of the American. Private First Class Harvey Naichees of the Ule Indian Reservation, Reser-vation, at Fi. Duchesne, Utah, who wears a Silver Star. Bronze Star and Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, was the first American Ameri-can soldier to enter the center of the capital. The main force of the division was deployed in suburban Zhlen-dorf Zhlen-dorf to the south. (Exchange Telegraph in a dispatch to London, said the British occupation force of about 15,000, was expected to arrive in the main part of the city tonight, the dispatch said, while the main British force would arrive tomorrow.) A. After rounding a shell-scared Victory monument in the Tier-garten, Tier-garten, taking a smart salute from a Red army woman traffic cop, and started for the remains of the kaiser's palace, a lot happened hap-pened to Natchees in a few minutes: min-utes: . A Berliner on a bicycle asked the American from Utah to look up his brother, Private William Schwellbeck, somewhere with American forces in France. Margaret Titze, who said she was born in Sheepshead Bay, N. Y., pleaded for a ride to Potsdam. Pots-dam. Margaret Titze was dressed in a swanky black fur coat, with a handkerchief-size United States flag tied to her sleeve, and when she spied the "U S" badge on Natchees' jacket she hugged him and her eyes filled with tears. On the rubble-lined street that is the once-famed Wilhelmstras-se, Wilhelmstras-se, Natchees inquired the location loca-tion of Hitler's chancellory. A middle-aged German woman, neatly dressed and twisting her hands nervously, replied, "Russian?" "Rus-sian?" "T.flHv T'm nn AmpriMn" said the khaki-clad private. "God be thanked", she exclaimed. ex-claimed. Most of the chancellory's walls still were standing. Red Army men were supervising the clearance clear-ance of debris and repairs to a water main at the corner, so Natchees Nat-chees did not go prospecting in the rear gardens for location of the subterranean bunker where Hitler is supposed to have met his death. In front of the Berlin cathed-. cathed-. ral, its huge dome wilted by bombs and fire, Natchees was given a set of prewar Berlin post- cards by a street peddler, who said, "Gee, it's great to see Americans Amer-icans again". Registering the distance on his speedometer, Natchees went 8 miles through Berlin without seeing one block of buildings that was intact. "It took quite a beating", he commented. He saw girls in freshly ironed frocks working in chain line removing re-moving bricks from mammoth (Continued on back page) First American To Land in Berlin (Continued from page 1) piles of wreckage. He saw women wo-men and children and old men queued up by the hundreds in front of bread stores. He noted a red flag on a pole outside headquarters of the German Ger-man Communist party. The east-west axis boulevard through the blasted Tiergartcn was still decorated with colossal portraits of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill which had been raised for the previous Red Army celebration. Scattered over the city were posters stuck up by the Russians telling Germans of the unity of I the United Nations. The 25-year-old American Indian In-dian who is coming home on i points after a few more days in Berlin drove this correspondent up from Halle this morning with Brig. Gen. John H. Collier of Dallas, Texas., in the lead of Collier's Col-lier's Second Armored Division in the rear of a 4000-vehicle convoy con-voy that stretched out many miles. Getting across the Elbe in a downpour of rain was a ticklish business because of Russian cavalcades cav-alcades going in the opposite direction di-rection to occupy territory that had been held by the Americans. ' Soviet soldiers on foot herded cows, horses and sheep in their big trek. Others rode lend-lease trucks and old model Soviet-made Soviet-made vehicles. Many Soviet women wo-men accompanied them, not all in uniform. I The spacious autobahn was decorated every quarter mile with fancy signboards bearing quotations from Stalin's speeches speech-es dealing with the Soviet ideal of equality of races, a rebirth of the German people and a state devoid of "Fascist pogrom-heroes". "I guess the Russians don't worry about non-fraternization", said Natchees. In Zchlendorf a German child approached and complained of hunger and received a share of the American's K rations. An old woman said she got only a small amount of bread. She received the rest of Natchees' lunch. "Back home I've got 200 head of cattle on my ranch and I'll never have to worry about going hungry", he said. |