BY SPECIALIST (T/5) CORPORAL FREDERICK (RICK) CARRIER | Behind the open door stood Rhine Maiden. Her bare legs were wide. She looked mean and scary. My heart pounded louder than bells of hell. The gun in her hand was the gun I saw the MP carrying. A Schmeisser machine pistol — and it pointed down at my head. My pituitary gland flew into action. Piss squirted into my pants making mud pies as I lay sprawled out on a dust-covered floor as my guts pushed dreck into my underwear. I began trembling. Nothing happened. I saw pictures of my brains, as a pink watermelon mist. Rhine Maiden stood in a frozen stance. I barked, “What’s with the gun? I came here to kill that bright light. Not you. Eager 88 Gunners on the other side of the Rhine are aiming at that bright window behind you.”
As a guest speaker at the Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives, WWII vet Rick Carrier recalled his role in the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp.
Quick as a striking cobra she whipped around and fired a burst. The light blew out. The room was black except for sparks from dangling electric wires. Her voice boomed, “American soldier. I need your help. That’s why I turned the light on, hoping you would come before that miserable rapist MP I had to kill for this gun. I would never shoot my salvation.”
“My salvation” rang in my ears. What is she thinking? I dug my secret night light out of a piss-soaked pocket. It still worked. I spotted Rhine Maiden sitting on the windowsill. The Schmeisser dangled off her right shoulder. “OK, honey. I believe your salvation pitch.”
I adjusted my stinking wet pants. “Lady. Saddle up. Let’s git the hell outta here. Follow my blue-green light until we get across the street.”
She held my hand to the door.
Inside, I double locked the door, turned on lights and checked the radio. Nothing from HQ. “Grab a seat. Got to shower ’n change. Food and coffee are in the kitchen. Have a feast.” Rhine Maiden picked up my secret flashlight, looking it over. “Your light’s very clever. Did you invent it?”
From the shower, “Yep.” She stood by the radio. “Can I turn on your radio?”
“NO! Absolutely NOT!” Poking my head out of the shower, yelling, “DON’T TOUCH THE RADIO!” I ducked back under the nice warm shower.
Her breath caressed my ear. “OK if I shower with you, American Soldier?”
“YEAH,” I blurted.
We had five days of pillow talk together. I’ve written 2,400 pages of her incredible life as an OSS spy in Hitler’s inner circle and what she did to survive his endless Nazi dinners. Rhine Maiden used my radio to make contact with her control at OSS and SHAEF, and was to meet him at Patton’s Rhine River crossing. She rode along with me to Patton’s, crossing the Rhine on his pontoon bridge. The world has a picture of Patton pissing in the Rhine River while cussing Hitler violently.
Rhine Maiden, in my uniform, gave me a discrete buss, said goodbye and hopped into the OSS contact’s car.
Now in the Third Army, I crossed the Rhine with my new boss, General Patton. Little did I know I would soon face horrors of unbelievable terror.
To be continued.
Among the first group of soldiers on Utah Beach, Normandy, U.S. Army Combat Engineer Rick Carrier marched through the European Theater of France, Belgium and Germany. While behind enemy lines in 1945 on a mission to obtain strategic supplies, he became the first allied soldier to discover Buchenwald concentration camp — then helped to liberate it, alongside Patton’s Third Army.
After the war, Carrier studied art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He co-authored 1955’s “Dive, The Complete Book of Skin Diving,” then was hired personally by Howard Hughes to design underwater rigging for one of the tycoon’s Hollywood publicity stunts. This past summer, the 90-year-old (a longtime member of Chelsea Community Church) was back in Normandy for a ceremony marking the 70th Anniversary of D-Day. In October, the President of France awarded Carrier the insignia of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor — France’s highest honor.
