The Billets - Berchtesgaden
According to David Webster, 1st platoon arrived in Berchtesgaden at about 9:30 in the morning. of May 5th. He fell asleep beneath a nearby tree and did not awaken until they were again moved by truck to their new billets at around 2:30 in the afternoon. A group of large trees still stands at the bus stop towards the center of town and I have to wonder if this is where he took his nap. He described the billets' location as being about a mile and a half north of town. Other descriptions in his book put this location on the main road north. The buidlings themselves are described as long and white and mutliple storied.
Clancy would have been part of this movement by truck to the billets, unless he had been called to some sort of task or duty eslewhere. It had snowed early that morning when they were 25 miles away. According to Webster, it was raining by this time.
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Some of First Platoon's Survivors of the War. (L to R): Sgt. Kenneth Mercier, "Pat" Christenson, Pvt. Clancy Lyall, and Sgt. Earl Hale. Photo courtesy Clancy Lyall
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We were sitting in his office chatting when he began to look around on his shelves and boxes. He pulled out a box of photos. We stood side by side as we talked, he handing me one photo after another. I looked at each picture carefully and then politely set them down in a neat stack on a nearby box. He paused, looked at me and then at the photos. He reached over, took the stack of photos I had set down and put them back in my hand. He said nothing. I said nothing. That was settled. He then began to hand me more photos as he continued the original conversation.
He had told me the story of how he and his buddies had found some German uniforms up in some houses on Obersalzeburg. With the war being over, and having a bit too much to drink and too little to do, they decided to try the uniforms on. Someone had a camera to record the event.
It had been almost five years since that conversation. The 70th anniversary of the end of the war was fast approaching and I was now heading to where the photos were taken. But, where exactly had they been taken? Clancy never really said. He had been gone three years. However, as I continued to prepare for the trip, I discovered there were some other sources for more information. Related photos and a few written descriptions narrowed the possibilities and led me to believe the photos were taken where Clancy and first platoon had been billeted. But where was Clancy's platoon billeted?
A related photo gave me a clue. Ambrose, when finalizing his popular account of Easy company 506 war history, made mention of the German Officer uniform story as described by O'Keefe:
"Sergeant Mercier….got into the spirit of the day when he dressed in a full German officer's uniform…. Someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in….to Captain Speirs.
Someone got word to Speirs before Mercier showed up. When trooprs brought Mercier up to Speirs's desk....Speirs did not look up. One of the troopers….declared, 'Sir, we have captured this German officer. What should we do with him?''
'Take him out and shoot him,' Speirs replied…
.'Sir', Mercier said, 'sir, please, sir, it’s me, Sergeant Mercier.
'Get out of that silly uniform,' Speirs ordered." (Ambrose:271)
Clancy had given me a photo of Mercier. And he was wearing part of a German uniform. This could only be a picture taken at the time of the story Ambrose described. But was this the CP?
I looked at the photo for a long time. The buildings were camouflaged. Very few were. Geoff Walden had noted on his website - The Third Reich In Ruins- that at that point the only known buildings to be camoufladged were those on Obsersalzberg. My initial thought was that the pictures were taken there. This then led me back to the idea the location may be somewhere on Obersalzburg. But I could find no photos that matched the layout shown in the picture.
I decided to adjust the contrast on the photo to see if I could bring out any significant details in be buildings or elesewhere. When I darkened the contrast significantly, the writing on the sign appeared: "Easy C.P."
Sgt. Mercier at the Easy Company CP. Photo Courtesy of Clancy Lyall.
Now I new for sure this was the location of the story told in Band of Brothers. And I knew the other photo with Clancy was taken at the same time because Mercier, more fully outfitted as a German officer, is also in the other photos. And, a careful look at the men in the background shows one of them, the one walking away from the camera, to be wearing a German officer's uniform. So I knew the pictures were taken at the CP. But where was this photo taken in relation to that of the four of them standing together?
More recent descriptions generically state the men of 2/506 were billeted at the SS Barracks. The complex that most immediately comes to mind is the SS Barracks on Obersalzberg. Initially, it seemed likely that this could be the place. After all, Clancy said they were up in some officer's houses there when they found the uniforms. I tried to match the photos to anything even the shape of a mountain, but no luck. My heart sank as I soon learned that it had all been torn down, but I also learned that it had been bombed before the 506th arrived there so it would be very unlikely they were billeted there. If the photos were taken at the CP then I was sure some E company historians or tour guides would have the answer--they would know the location of the company CP. I sent inquiries to a few people who were known to be E/506 PIR resources, but no real response was forthcoming.
I revisted David Webster's published account of his time with the 506PIR--Parachute Infantry. He was in the same platoon as Clancy and mentioned him several times in his work. I read through his account of their time in Berchtesgaden.
Webster gave several descriptions of their billets there. One read:
"....at 2:30 a convoy of G.I trucks took us to a settlement of long, white, two-story chalets on a highway about a mile and a half north of Berchtesgaden. The new billets were laid out precisely as an Army camp and were separated from the road by a smooth lawn a hundred feet wide." (Webster:241)
A map dated to the 40s? in a college collection which depicted one half of Berchtesgaden--the eastern half--was of some help. It did show a road leading north out of Berchtesgaden and there were some collections of buildings depicted at certain points, but they gave no hint of being "precisely as an Army camp." Obersalzburg is to the south of Berchtesgaden. If the photos were of the billets, then it could not be Obersalzburg. Could their billets have been far from the CP? Webster answered the question in his description, but I could not be sure of it until a few more details were in place and the final confirmation would only come if I could find the ground and walk it.
The more I read of Berchtesgaden and the surrounding area, the more I could see it was a collection of military complex buildings, even outside of Obersalzberg. Additional descriptions, which included the interior of their billets were in Webster's account.
I had come across a webpage about the Berchtesgaden and Obersalzberg and at about the same time two different people recommended I look at on that site. I had sent an email to a Mr. Geoff Walden, the author of the site and a book on the subject, inquiring about the location of the CP. It was evident he knew a lot more about Berchtesgaden than most. He had been documenting the Germany of then and now for some time and his web page showed some pictures other 101st photograph locations. I was hopeful he had some information on the exact location.
He did respond back, providing the coordinates for a location, one he had taken another person a few years ago- they also had an interest in the billet location. I began to go back over the description provided by Webster and some other details provided in Ambrose's account and some other accounts. And then this stuck out at me... A few pages further on in his account, Webster mentions them watching surrendured Germans walk past their billets in a caravan of sorts and up the road to a pow camp, which had until recently been a work camp for Germany's slave labor. I told Geoff that the location they had suspected to be the billets could not be correct as there was no road heading further north to a camp. It had to be a through road, not a dead end.
He suggested another location which was along the through road that passed Stanggass and led up to Bad Reichenhall. It was a group of chalets occupied by the Nazi police at Bischofswiesen. The problem with this location was that it was more than a mile and a half north. And, it did not appear to have long, white two story chalets, though the buildings would have stood roughly 100 feet from the roadside and would seem to meet Webster's descriptions of the interior. I cold not yet resolve this disparity, so it was back to the photographs to look for clues. I believed it was along this road though. Another detail convinced me it could not be far. In one of the interviews with another E co veteran, Marcus Brotherton had recorded the detail of how one of the men had picked up a vehicle and mentioned being near a small hospital. As I studied the google earth map, I saw the hosptial building, now disused, and it was along the same road as the police chalets. The billets could not be too far away.
I began looking at other pictures to see if they held any clues to the exact location. Perhaps another picture would have the tiny guard house in it. I was not getting anywhere until I happened to look at this picture.
It was a photo like the one depicted here of the Eagle's nest that got me thinking. If the picture was taken north of Berchtesgaden and on a through road, then there were a limited number of possiblities for the location. I looked at the marks cut into the mountain behind and to the left in the image. I wondered if any could be found in the photos of Clancy and his friends.
Sure enough there were marks on the mountain in the background. Could they be matched up to anything in another other photos?
With only a few days left until my departure, I began to look through Rondezvous with Destiny and Epic of the 101t and the Currahee Scrapbook. I was printing some of the images to bring with me and match up when I arrived in the Berchtesgaden area.
View of the Eagle's Nest and the valley beyond and below. Signal Corps photo.
Then I saw it. A picture of the award ceremony at what is called the Chancellery caught my attention.
You will notice in the background of the awared ceremony photo a light colored gash in the side of the mountain in the upper left section of the photo. It is most visible above the treeline and extends diagonally up the side of the mountain. When you look at the picture of Clancy and his buddies, you will find the same mark in the same general area of the photograph. The photo above is taken at the Kanzlei or Chancellery complex at Berchtesgaden. It's location is known and the buildings in the photo still stand.
As I began to look through the photos in Epic of the 101st and in The Currahee Scrapbook another photo stood out to me. It had the guard house and the building and the gate. I could not believe what I was seeing. And in the foreground on the left was the cross hatch fencing... The same fencing in the photo that Mercier was in. I suspected, based on the shadows alone from the pictures clancy gave me that one was taken at 90 degrees from the direction of the other.
To the side of the road on a post is a Kangaroo sign. The callsign for the 101st HQ. The HQ was located at the Reichskanslei which, at the time, going straight ahead at the intersection and following the road as it bent to the left, would bring you directly to the building. It still does, though additional roads and buildings now stand in the area, and other buildings are now gone.
Photo taken of Mercier on May 5 or 6th, 1945, courtesy of Clancy Lyall
