Finding Leo Shore

How Two Jews and 24 Red Necks Agreed to Bury the Hatchet And Fight the Germans Instead

Through the years, my memory has often taken me back to the night in Normandy in 1944 when “Swede” Jensen held an M1 rifle on me, sputtering through a drunken haze;

“I’ve always wanted to kill a Jew. If you move you’re dead.”

I huddled in a corner paralyzed for perhaps 20 minutes (it seemed like hours) until Swede passed out in a stupor. I beat a hasty retreat to my tent in the compound where we were holed up in France as our unit was waiting to join Gen. George Patton’s Third Army, as he chased the Germans across Europe.

I climbed into my sleeping bag and tried vainly to sleep. It was clear that I desperately needed to share my dilemma with my good friend Leo Shore and solve this internal mess before the real combat began.

It was perhaps the fortunes of war that Leo Shore and I were assigned to the same company of the 95th infantry division in the same week, at Indiantown Gap military Reservation PA, as we prepared to go overseas in early 1944.

Leo was 30. A burly, tough New York businessman who grew up on the rugged streets of south Chicago, learned to box from a pro in the neighborhood. He also had volunteered to take on the Nazis, even though he had a very low draft status.  I was 18, a kid, only weeks out of Heights High, also a volunteer.

It seemed natural that we bonded almost immediately after we found ourselves to be the only Jews assigned to an assemblage of red necks, in the 379th regimental headquarters company. It was made up mostly of members of the Oklahoma/Kansas National Guard.

They were pretty motley crew, truck drivers, like Swede, mechanics, cooks, wiremen, and pure infantrymen trained to kill. Needless to say, very much unlike the folks I knew or had experienced as I grew up in the sheltered environment of the Cleveland suburbs.

“This isn’t going to be easy”, my new friend cautioned me, referring not to the impending combat with the enemy, but to potential trouble with the red necks in our company. “If we stick together it will be better,” Leo advised.  Even in my youthful naiveté it was clear to me what he was saying.

Until Swede’s threat in Normandy we had suffered mostly upsetting verbal assaults about “horns”. Talk of “friendly” fire, “Jesus killers”.  “Swede” was a different matter.  Leo took the event into his own hands the next day, after he heard about it. Threatening the big red faced guy with mayhem, if he ever tried it again. He never did.

It was perhaps the “shock and awe” and the recognition that Jews, like rednecks, could fight, both in and out of combat that brought most of our company to its senses.  After some tough talk, and some serious conversation with the more rational of the group, including some officers it all settled down. It seemed to help as we moved into the front lines in France. We had a found a common enemy.             

Leo and I said goodbye in Germany in May, 1945, after surviving the hazards of the rednecks and the artillery and mortar fire of the Nazis. I had not seen or talked to him since that moment. He went back to his business in New York. I started college. Many of the memories had faded. Then 65 years of silence.

Just by chance he called the other day. He had found a German Reich mark dated 1965 with my signature on it, while cleaning out his war memorabilia.

We made a date to share memories, and met at his comfortable winter apartment in Boca Raton. I didn’t know what to expect.  “I’m 95", he announced in a bold and clear, almost youthful voice.. “Healthy. Okay except for my legs”…And he was absolutely clear headed. We reminisced about the challenges of fighting with Gen. Patton, about the day he visited our company.  And his becoming the colonel’s driver, and me driver the regimental chaplain, to make sure that God, if there was one, was on my side. And of course, about Swede Jensen incident.

“After I talked to him that SOB was petrified”, Leo recalled as if it happened yesterday.

“I thought we were going to fight the Germans, but that turned out to be only half of it”…he joked.

We viewed a DVD of the exploits of our Division, later called “The Iron Men of Metz“. We couldn’t help but remember the loss of some of the men who became our dear friends and comrades who died.

As we were about to leave he turned to me: “Buddy, Let’s meet for lunch the next time you’re in New York.”

“We’ll do it,” I said…”How about for your 96th birthday.” 

“Sounds good to me,” he responded, without a moment’s hesitation.

The 65 years of silence was over. And it felt good.