Vonnegut, Kurt, 423rd, POW

[connie]

Kurt Vonnegut, PFC 423rd, 2nd Bn Hq. Co., POW

Author: Slaughter House 5




Discussion Board Notes on Slaughterhouse 5: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4801/thread

Wikipedia Biography: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut
Quoting from the WWII Section of this bio:
Kurt Vonnegut's experience as a soldier and prisoner of war had a profound influence on his later work.

As a private with the 423rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division, Vonnegut was captured during the Battle of the Bulge on December 19, 1944, after the 106th was cut off from the rest of Courtney Hodges's First Army. "The other American divisions on our flanks managed to pull out; we were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks".

Imprisoned in Dresden, Vonnegut was chosen as a leader of the POWs because he spoke some German. After telling the German guards "what [he] was going to do to them when the Russians came", he was beaten and had his position as leader taken away.

While a prisoner, he witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden in February 1945, which destroyed most of the city. Vonnegut was one of a group of American prisoners of war to survive the attack in an underground slaughterhouse meat locker used by the Germans as an ad hoc detention facility. The Germans called the building Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five) which the Allied POWs adopted as the name for their prison.

Vonnegut said the aftermath of the attack was "utter destruction" and "carnage unfathomable." This experience was the inspiration for his famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and is a central theme in at least six of his other books. In Slaughterhouse-Five he recalls that the remains of the city resembled the surface of the moon, and that the Germans put the surviving POWs to work, breaking into basements and bomb shelters to gather bodies for mass burial, while German civilians cursed and threw rocks at them. Vonnegut eventually remarked, "There were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Germans sent in troops with flamethrowers. All these civilians' remains were burned to ashes."

Brief Video Biography (which once included some WWII film clips; now seems to be a still shot with narrative): www.biography.com/people/kurt-vonnegut-9520329

Written transcription of an interview with Vonnegut: www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3605/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-kurt-vonnegut

P. 170 of Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut moves from discussion of the weapon he was trained on (240mm howitzer; larger than those used by the 106th) to his time and "training" with the 106th where he was a battalion scout: books.google.com/books?id=bLQeOR_m2YMC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=Kurt+Vonnegut+106th+Infantry+Division&source=bl&ots=FdM8l8N82n&sig=Ho_8CzH8ROK_KeCc-FTdeSj3EkU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WcJVU4L1OK3fsAT2uIFY&ved=0CGIQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Kurt%20Vonnegut%20106th%20Infantry%20Division&f=false


More interesting biographical bits can be found at this Indiana Historical Site: www.indianahistory.org/our-collections/reference/notable-hoosiers/kurt-vonnegut#.U1V3sihWL78

Named on the list of those at Slaughterhouse 5: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4800/thread

Gifford Doxsee mentions common experiences with Vonnegut at Slaughterhouse 5: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/2766/thread

[connie]

Looking over more info on Vonnegut I came across a book on his life published in 2011.

The book is entitled And So it goes: Kurt Vonnegut, a Life by Charles J. Fields




After obtaining Vonnegut's permission to write this biography, the author began interviewing him. As it turned out, he only had 3 months to conduct these interviews before a fall led to Vonnegut's unexpected death.

The original link to a write-p about this book cited here read like a history of the 423rd. Of course that link no longer works
But here's a site with a brief summary & links to several purchase options: www.goodreads.com/book/show/10816769-and-so-it-goes

[connie]

A link to a 1994 taped presentation by Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller on their war experiences

can be found on this discussion board under Helpful Links/ "Watch it Now: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/3804/thread

[connie]

Excerpt from The Brothers Vonnegut by Ginger Strand, published in November 2015 www.salon.com/2016/01/02/kurt_vonneguts_pow_nightmare_inside_the_world_war_ii_battle_that_shaped_slaughterhouse_five/
This tells the military back-story behind his capture...

(This has been posted to replace the link formerly listed here that no longer worked-- as noted in the post below)

[jrwentz]

Connie,

Ref: Jul 17, 2016 at 2:33am QuotelikePost Options
Post by connie on Jul 17, 2016 at 2:33am
Just ran across this one...

Summary of Vonnegut's story: ww2awartobewon.com/wwii-articles/106th-infantry-division-kurt-vonneguts-war/

The link above no longer works. However, I found it on the Association website at the link below. The story is "Felix M. Gulch: An American Soldier in World War II
By Michael A. Niemczyk" Felix and Kurt Vonnegut were with the same group as Dad from capture to Stalag IVB. It helps us fill in some details on things Dad talked about such as being trapped in the boxcars at night when the allies bombed the railyard. In Dad's records is a report where one of the questions was about his worst memory as a POW and this is what Dad listed.

www.106thinfdivassn.org/index/html/v70n2.htm