75 years later, a soldier’s small part in the liberation of Dachau echoes our new fight

Jim Jackson was not an overtly patriotic man. But when he died this month in Sacramento at age 98, he left a neatly folded American flag in his belongings and asked it be buried with him, along with his dog tags. Also in his things: a small box of military memorabilia, including his Bronze Star, his uniform patches and ribbons, and a large road map of France from 1944. A line he’d neatly drawn on the map showed a path from the coast of Normandy to just south of Paris and into Germany.

Jim was not especially sentimental, nor was he a career military man. He served three years. But another thing in his box helps explain why he held these items dear for three quarters of a century: an envelope of gruesome photos taken the day he and hundreds of other American soldiers liberated the German concentration camp at Dachau and freed its captives.

That was 75 years ago, April 29, 1945. I am not a historian, but that day, arguably, was the high point in U.S. history. It’s also a day well worth contemplating as we go through another day of social distancing wondering if we can remain united to defeat what the president has called “an invisible enemy.”

That day in Dachau effectively ended the war in Europe and defined a generation raised in the Great Depression. The pictures in Jim’s box, sent to him by a buddy many years later, illustrate in graphic terms why he and millions of other Americans sacrificed so much, many giving their lives, to help people they had never met and would never know.

Jim never complained. But imagine being a young man of 20, a recent high school graduate with a zest for living and a lifetime ahead of him, plucked from his family in the Central Valley and sent across the country and then across the ocean into a violent conflict that at times must have seemed to have little to do with him, his friends or his country.

As Jim headed off to boot camp, there were prominent voices arguing that our interests were best served by closing our borders to refugees and closing our hearts to people in other countries less fortunate, or weaker, than ourselves. But at great personal and national sacrifice, the country united behind the massive mobilization in which Jim would play a small part.

Jim was assigned to the 92nd Signal Battalion and trained to string telephone cable to allow soldiers on the battlefield to communicate with officers in the rear. His unit landed on Omaha Beach shortly after D-Day and fought in the Battle of the Bulge the following winter. Jim was awarded a Bronze Star for swimming across a river in France carrying cable while under heavy enemy fire.

On that April day in Dachau, his unit was among the first to enter the concentration camp, where thousands of prisoners, most of them Jews, had been put to death. Thousands more remained in captivity. There were bodies stacked in piles and in railroad box cars; the stench of death was overwhelming. Battle-hardened soldiers were overcome by emotion as they pondered the depths of human cruelty.

Although Jim showed those photos to his daughter Jodi and me, he didn’t talk much about his war experience, despite his fierce pride. But after he passed away on April 2, we found a book on his shelf that tells the story of his journey through the eyes of a fellow soldier. “Where the Birds Never Sing,” by Jack Sacco, is the story of the 92nd Signal Battalion. It follows the unit‘s soldiers from training in northern Texas to the Invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and on to Dachau.

Sacco wrote the book in part because his father, Joe Sacco, had shown him those same photos when he was a boy of 12. Joe Sacco wanted his son to know, in case anyone ever doubted it, that the Nazi atrocities really did happen, and he had borne witness to them. And for Joe Sacco, like Jim Jackson, seeing Dachau made absolutely clear what all the hardship, sacrifice and loss had been about.

For Jodi and me, Jim’s death from cancer, and the story of his life, put into perspective the economic loss and personal anguish the coronavirus pandemic has caused so many Americans. Although the war and the pandemic are vastly different experiences, the widespread upheaval of these past two months is undoubtedly the greatest this country has seen since the end of World War II.

Like Jim and his buddies, we are being asked to make sacrifices large and small for the good of people whose lives are at risk and, in most cases, will never know what we’ve done on their behalf.

None of us signed up for this. But how we respond may well define us for future generations of Americans, and for the world.

Daniel Weintraub is a former Sacramento Bee columnist who is now chief of staff to state Sen. Steve Glazer. He lives in Sacramento with his partner, Jodi Jackson.

This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 4:00 AM.