From Immigrant to U.S. Marine

By LtCol Dominik George Nargele USMC

Historical eye-witness biography about escape from Eastern Europe, Dresden survival, coming to America, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam service, East Germany and Dominican Republic political and military events. It is dedicated to the victims of Communism and terror. Original sources are used primarily and references to personal papers, photography, diary entries and direct observations are made. Father was young lawyer in St. Petersburg before and during 1917 Russian Revolution and later observed political developments as an important lawyer in Lithuania. Survived two World Wars. Author was Infantry Officer with 1st, 2nd and 3rd Marine Divisions, served 28 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, with two combat tours in Vietnam, with award of Purple Heart, was Naval Representative to Soviet forces in Germany, Defense Attach in Santo Domingo, Naval War College Honor Graduate, Served with DIA and CIA. Earned MA and MSA from George Washington University and PhD from Georgetown University.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 22, 2007
• ISBN: 9781467816601

LtCol Dominik George Nargele USMC

Dominik G. Nargele, LtCol USMC (Ret), MA, MSA, PhD, was born in Kaunas and grew up in New York. Entered service in June 1957 and retired in February 1985. Completed 28th OCC and Basic School 2/61.  Served as platoon leader and XO, Co H, 2nd Bn, 6th Marines before being assigned to 5th Marines in Camp Pendelton. Transferred in 1965 to Okinawa with 1st Bn, 5th Marines and landed in Vietnam on 6 July 1965 as platoon commander, Communications Platoon, 2nd Bn, 9th Marines operating against Communist forces until 4 June 1966. Was awarded the Purple Heart, Navy Commendation Medal and Presidential Unit Citation. Returned to Vietnam for second tour on 13 March 1969, served with G-3, 1st Marine Division and was awarded second Navy Commendation with Combat V. Served from 1971 to 1974, in Potsdam as Naval Representative and from 1982 to 1984, in Santo Domingo as Defense Attache. Received MA and MSA from George Washington University and PhD from Georgetown University.

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© 2007 LtCol Dominik George Nargele USMC (Ret). All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/14/2007

ISBN: 978-1-4259-7909-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-1660-1 (e)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1 –

ESCAPE FROM COMMUNISM

CHAPTER 2 –

IMMIGRATING TO AMERICA

CHAPTER 3 –

US MARINE TRAINING AND

DEPLOYMENTS

CHAPTER 4 –

FIRST TOUR OF DUTY IN VIETNAM

CHAPTER 5 –

SECOND TOUR OF DUTY IN VIETNAM

CHAPTER 6 –

RECONNAISSANCE OFFICER IN EAST GERMANY

CHAPTER 7 –

OKINAWA AND KOREA SERVICE

CHAPTER 8 –

DOM IN THE DOM REP

CHAPTER 9 –

COMING HOME TO VIRGINIA

EPILOGUE

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special thanks must go to the distinguished reviewers of the draft manuscript of this book and their insightful comments, General P. X. Kelley USMC (Ret); Ambassador Lev E. Dobriansky; Major General Donald R. Gardner USMC (Ret), President of the Marine Corps University; Father Francis Giedgautas; Major General W. H. Rice USMC (Ret); Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons USMC (Ret); Charles Krutz, SES (Ret); Colonel William K. Rockey USMC (Ret); Colonel Frederick C. Turner USA (Ret); Captain Charles Chadbourn USNR, Naval War College; Richard Hines, Foreign Service (Ret); Colonel Paul Nikulla USAF (Ret); Colonel L. G. Kelley USMC (Ret); Colonel James Quisenberry USMC (Ret); Colonel William V. Bournes USA (Ret); Bebe F. Rice, Author; Trudy Wilkinson; Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Guiler USA (Ret); Lieutenant Colonel Russel Lloyd, Jr. USMC (Ret); Lieutenant Colonel Richard Phaneuf USMC (Ret); Lieutenant Colonel Leukadzia Galka USAF; Major Franklin Broadwell USMC (Ret); Elizabeth R. Birkhimer; Jurate Micuta and Patricia Snellings.

Thanks to family and friends for their help and comments, Cynthia, Jana and Rocky Meskauskas; Ella Waller Nargele; Nora and Tim Cullen; Lelia Belle Waller; Karen and Eric Meskauskas; Anne McKenney, MD; Elaine Gardner; Mary Lundt, Esq; Anne Tunstall; Margaret and Edward Burton; Audrey and Lacy Powell; Britton Warfield and Virginia Morgan. Ultimately, I am responsible for the contents and any errors.

Thanks to Marel Mallari for her help with the preparation of this manuscript.

This book is most respectfully dedicated to the

victims of communism and terror.

CHAPTER 1 –

ESCAPE FROM COMMUNISM

SURVIVORS OF DRESDEN

At about 10:15 pm on Wednesday, 13 of February in 1945, three incendiary gravity bombs hit the roof of our townhouse, on Praeger Street. We were living not far from the central railroad station in the city of Dresden. Although I was only a child, some details about what happened at the time are unforgettable and remain etched vividly in my memory.

For as long as I will live, I think I will remember the howling sirens and the increasing sound of the engines of many aircraft. As the sounds of the aircraft came closer and their engines became louder, there was suddenly a deafening crash on the top of the three-story townhouse in which we were staying, followed soon by two more loud crashes.

Somehow our family survived through a nightmare of air raids in a city of thousands of refugees fleeing from the Soviet Army and communism. During three days of bombing, according to U.S. Air Force historians, about 25,000 persons were killed and 35,000 were wounded. Reportedly one British writer has estimated that about 60,000 people were killed in Dresden. Since there were many uncounted refugees, displaced persons, prisoners of war and residents in Dresden, some observers have estimated that the real count of persons killed was higher, about 135,000. After the bombing, with incendiary, high explosive, and some 8,000 pound block-buster bombs, it took eight days, we were later told, before the fires in the city burned themselves out.

BACKGROUND

Our family consisted of five persons. In addition to my mother and father, there was the wife of my cousin, Eugenia, and her two-year old son, Erikas, with us. We were displaced persons and refugees from Lithuania fleeing from communism. The Soviet Army first invaded our country in 1940, as part of an agreement and alliance between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. In 1941, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the Soviet Army retreated from Lithuania. Then Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany until early 1945. The Soviet Army was coming back with vengeance in 1945, during the last days of the war, to install tyranny and communist enslavement in Lithuania. My father, as a prominent lawyer until the war, knew he would not survive if we remained in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. He believed that he would be arrested and that we would be sent to a death camp in Siberia.

We fled from Vilnius in early January 1945, just ahead of the invading Soviet Army, through Poland to Berlin. My father waited until the last minute to leave Lithuania, because he wanted to make the statement that we were Lithuanians fleeing from communism and not people who were repatriating to Germany. In Berlin we lived through several air raids. During one, I was told years later, the shell-shocked animals broke out of the Berlin Zoo. Some animals had to be shot by the police in the streets because it was not possible to capture them.

My fears decreased as we were told that we were going away from Berlin to a safer place called Dresden. As we packed our belongings, we were told that Dresden had never been bombed because it had world-wide acclaim as a place of artistic and architectural treasures. The city was undefended, and it had no military installations or strategic military value. Dresden was the capital of Saxony, and the kings of Saxony had in past centuries brought famous architects and painters from Italy to build exquisite structures and create works of art, which in some respects rivaled Potsdam and Paris. The Dresden museum was filled with famous oil paintings and sculptures.

DRESDEN BEFORE DESTRUCTION

When we arrived in Dresden, there was no visible bomb damage but sirens were howling at night as British, American and Russian aircraft flew near or over the city. Dresden, with a population of about 1,000,000, was overflowing with about 300,000 refugees fleeing from the Soviet Army in the Balkans, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States. In the inner city many homes had been abandoned by the citizens of Dresden, who were afraid to live near railroad concentrations and other likely targets for air attack. Many Dresdner’s abandoned their homes and moved to the suburbs or countryside.

After the check of our passports and other documents, we were billeted by city officials in an empty townhouse with other refugees, near the central railroad station. We were told that it was the only place still available for us in the crowded city, and there were many more refugees coming to Dresden behind us who would gladly live there if we did not want to move in.

For the next several weeks we were happy to have a place to stay. The townhouse was luxurious, compared to where we slept during our journey from Vilnius through Poland and Berlin. It was made of strong bricks, had three floors, and a basement. We were billeted on the first floor. Several former Lithuanian army officers, and their families, a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest, and some other refugees were living on the floors above us.

Although the sirens howled every night, and there were leaflet drops by American aircraft (warning the people of the impending destruction of the whole city), there were no air attacks, from our arrival in the later part of January to the fateful night of Ash Wednesday, February 13. Those amongst us who attended church that day and had a cross of ashes marked on our forehead, heard the words in Latin from dust to dust, from ashes to ashes and no truer words were ever spoken before the air attacks began. We began to believe that, in spite of sirens and leaflet drops, that the city would be spared by the allies, since it had no military importance and Germany had been defeated long ago. It seemed that a senseless slaughter of civilians and the destruction of art objects would not be conducted by the victorious allies. In order to pass the days, my father took me for walks and streetcar rides, while my mother was happy to see us leave the house and Eugenia had more room to take care of Erikas. We soon learned that streetcar rides were cheap, they ran on time, and were a good way to see the city.

Many streetcars led from the central railroad station to different parts of the suburbs. My father and I usually took streetcars from the main railroad station to the end of the line in the suburbs. At the end of the line there was often an inn or a beer hall. My father always bought a small beer, since beer was very good and inexpensive. By the time he finished his beer a streetcar was usually getting ready to take us back to the inner city. On one of our trips, I was given a small glass of March Beer in the outdoor park of an inn, which made me feel very grown up. The March Beer tasted good because it was sweet and had low alcohol content. It was a favorite drink for women and sometimes given even to children.

Our lives were probably saved as a result of the streetcar riding throughout the surrounding area of our townhouse. As we learned where each streetcar was going, we learned about the layout and geography of the city. My father had no illusions about the city being spared. We thought that the Americans would resist the senseless killing of civilians and that the British might show some mercy. However, my father knew the Bolsheviks from the days they took power in St. Petersburg, when he was working as a young lawyer in the justice department (Senat) of Czar Nicholas II. My father said that no one in the world was more ruthless and cold-blooded in killing innocent people than the Bolsheviks and their leader, Joseph Stalin. My father felt that it was just a matter of time before the destruction of Dresden would take place, as the Soviet Army was getting closer and moving into Germany. In my father’s opinion, Stalin and the Soviet High Command (Stavka) would demand the bombing of Dresden from President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to support the advance of the Soviet Army. As history later showed, my father was right. President Roosevelt authorized the destruction of Dresden over the objection of some senior U.S. Air Force Officers. Winston Churchill was also pressured by Stalin into approval and aided into his decision by the fact that the Germans were firing V-2 rockets against England, according to the British historian, Anthony Beevor.

My father and I also learned about the layout of Dresden during the many walks we took, mostly in the morning and afternoon. Upon leaving our townhouse and turning right, there was a wide main street, located between the central railroad station and the Elbe river waterfront. The main street had many shops and led to an old and beautiful part of the city, near the river where the Zwinger Museum, the cathedral, and other famous buildings are found.

I remember a toy store on the main street, near the old part of the city, which displayed a small generator, toy cars, military trucks, and armored personnel carriers. There were also small tanks painted in German-army gray with a black cross on the side of the turret. It was explained to me that the generator could be used to produce real electric power.

One day my father somehow obtained a quota coupon to go to lunch at the very beautiful Italian Village restaurant, on the banks of the Elbe. Our whole family walked to the restaurant, which was in an exclusive villa constructed by Italian architects, as in Venice and Rome. We had to wait to be seated for over an hour. I saw a German general with a wide red stripe on his uniform trousers being given precedence and being seated before us. The lunch consisted of a piece of baked white fish served in butter, which we usually never saw, with a small white potato, and a vegetable. White wine was served with lunch.

One day when we walked in the old town square near the cathedral, I was startled to see a German soldier with five small tank patches on the right sleeve of his uniform. The soldier had bandages under his uniform and appeared to be on convalescence leave. When I asked my mother about the patches, I was told by someone standing near us that the patches, each with a hand-sewn picture of a tank on it, represented Soviet tanks destroyed by the soldier with an anti-tank grenade launcher. In the remnants of the German Army, we were told, soldiers were sent to fight against Soviet tanks with hand-held weapons and little or no ammunition. In 1945, about 10,000 German soldiers were executed by the Nazis for withdrawing or not fighting against impossible odds.

Sometimes we walked from our townhouse toward the railroad station, because there were some small stands on a nearby street there that sold food. There were also some restaurants which opened for business for a brief while until their food supply ran out. The restaurants were closed most of the time due to severe shortages of all kinds of food. A few times we were lucky to find one restaurant open, which served herring filets on white rolls. The prices were very reasonable and we paid with our near-worthless German marks. Our family was given ration coupons for food and clothing by the city government, but everything was scarce and hard to find. We supplemented our coupons by selling pieces of my mother’s jewelry, clothing, and furs. The furs, which my mother brought from Lithuania, were a black and a silver lamb coat, a silver fox stole, fur hats, a fur jacket, and some other small items. We sold them one at a time, to make them last for as long as possible. Later my mother would save one of her furs and some jewelry from the burning townhouse somehow as we left.

THREE DIRECT HITS TO OUR TOWNHOUSE

On the fateful evening, I remember that I was allowed to remain in bed, as was usual when the sirens began to howl. Every evening when the sirens started, I was worried and afraid, but until this time nothing had ever happened to any of us. The usual explanations given by the residents of our townhouse when the sirens howled were that aircraft were flying over the city to drop leaflets, or to bomb another target, or that only an air reconnaissance was being flown, sometimes that it was simply a false alarm.

A little after 10:00 p.m. things were different that night because the engine noises were louder than ever before. The walls of our townhouse began to shake and vibrate. This time my mother got me out of bed and made me put on my socks and shoes. I wore a small sheepskin coat with heavy wool lining over my pajamas. The coat was embroidered with red and blue thread, and given to my father by Jewish Lithuanians who, I was later told, were being ordered into the ghetto in Vilnius. The coat was given to my father as payment for changing their papers and legal documents with vital personal data, thus saving them from being sent to the ghetto.

As a prominent lawyer, my father was asked for help by many Lithuanians, and he helped sometimes by changing names, birthplaces, and other data in official documents to save their lives. My father refused payment for what he considered his patriotic duty as a Lithuanian, and my sheepskin coat was a token of gratitude for his legal services. In retrospect, I wonder now if that was a partial cause for my father’s arrest by the German secret state police (Gestapo). I remember two Gestapo men came in the middle of the night and took my father away in a black car. The Gestapo men gave me some candy and appeared friendly to my mother. They wore dark leather trench coats with a flashlight buttoned to the upper left side. I will never forget the horror and anxiety I felt as it all happened.

I think that I was in pre-school when they took my father away, and it must have been mid-1944 when it happened. After several weeks in prison, my father and some other Lithuanian dignitaries were spared execution, and my father was released. I was told that my father was released due to the pleading by my mother and by a professor of linguistics at the University of Koeningsberg (now Kaliningrad) who was an authority on Sanskrit and the Lithuanian language and knew my father well. It also helped my father that he had a high level German visa (Herren Visa) going back to the early 1930’s, when he traveled on vacation through Germany to Ostende, Belgium, and the French Rivera. The vacation trips that my father made were sometimes for gambling, according to my mother, and she said he often lost money.

During the fateful evening, I was getting dressed while my father was playing cards with the Lithuanian priest and two former officers in the Lithuanian army on the third floor. All the women and children were going to the basement but the men continued to play cards. They were playing a game called proferanz. My mother yelled up the stairs several times, finally saying in frustration that she was taking me to the basement shelter without my father. I felt some anger at my father too because I could not understand why he was not seeking shelter with us. Then I learned later in other similar situations that my father showed great calmness under fire and demonstrated good leadership to everyone around him, preventing panic by never showing any fear, and always taking care of women and children first.

Suddenly there was a big crash on the roof of our townhouse, as the first incendiary gravity bomb scored a direct hit. Had the bomb been a high explosive fragmentation bomb, it would probably have killed my father and the other card players on the third floor. However, the incendiary bomb was designed to hit the target and then destroy it by burning constantly for many hours, we were told later. An incendiary bomb was about five meters long and like a section of a telephone pole. It was about a third of a meter wide and filled with phosphorus, which was impossible to extinguish with water or even sand. The bomb that hit our townhouse started to burn the roof and the third floor, and that finally broke up the men’s card game. As the card players came down the stairs, two more incendiary bombs hit the house. All the residents came finally into the basement shelter. It seemed that we had over twenty people crowded together. I am sure that everyone thought about how to get out, as the fire began to spread and the top floors were now burning.

With typical German efficiency, an air raid plan had been posted on the basement wall. A man came forward and said that he was the designated air raid warden of our townhouse and that the men should go back upstairs and get plenty of wet towels for everybody. After that was done the air raid warden closed the basement door at the top of the stairs to keep the fire from spreading into our space.

When the door was closed, I had a deep fear that this would be the end for us. I did not want to die, I thought, and it seemed that we would either burn to death or die of suffocation trapped in the basement. As I looked to my mother and father, Eugenia was in tears, holding little Erikas close to her chest in a bundle of wet clothes. The fire was spreading upstairs and there seemed to be no way out. Then the air raid warden, rather rudely I thought, pushed his way through the crowd to a wall near the corner. There the outline of the door was painted in white. A red bucket filled with sand was nearby and a big red ax was hanging on big nails on the wall.

The warden took the ax and to our amazement began to hit the center of the door. Soon bricks started to crumble and a small opening was visible, leading to a small passageway. Several men began taking the bricks to the side and soon the opening in the wall was large enough for everyone to go through. We were told to put the wet towels on our heads and follow the passageway to the street. It was damp and dark, and led past garbage cans. As we moved through the passage we could breathe some cold air, but it had a taste of smoke and burning materials, beside bricks and wood. I thought we were saved until we exited into the street in front of the house.

The first thing I saw was that we were in the middle of a blazing inferno and firestorm. Every house was on fire and burning rapidly. Fires were belching smoke through windows. Balls of fire were falling into the street, and some were rolling along the street, propelled apparently by drafts of wind that seemed to come out of nowhere. My father made us all stay together closely as our visibility was limited to a few meters sometimes, and we began to walk through the center of the streets in the firestorm. My father led us toward the area around the railroad station, where he knew there was an underpass made of heavy stone where the rail lines led out from the station.

People in the streets were yelling to go to the Elbe, to a park near the water. One woman appeared to be crazed and walking aimlessly with two flowerpots, which she decided to save from among all of her belongings. I turned to look at her more and instinctively wanted to help her somehow, but my mother turned me closer to her side and we continued to walk slowly in the center of the street, wearing wet towels on our heads to keep our hair from catching fire. We learned later that many of the people who walked to the Elbe had been machine gunned to death by strafing P-51 fighter escorts the next day.

My father’s many walks and streetcar rides before the air raid was life saving for us, as we knew where to go to escape the firestorms during the attack. After a while he found several streets that were not yet engulfed by flames, and could lead us to the stone underpass. We walked faster as we saw the distant rail lines, which were elevated on mounds above the streets. As we came closer to the underpass, we discarded the wet towels to be able to walk faster. We walked faster and faster,