Bi-lingual Farmhand Put Language to Work on Front Lines
Clarence Lohff • Holstein, Iowa
Sergeant, U.S. Army
Don Doll, S.J. photo • Story by Tim Gallagher
Clarence E. Lohff uses the word "lucky" when he describes his military service. He was "lucky" to be drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, thus saving himself from hard labor and a hardscrabble existence on an Ida County, Iowa, farmstead.
He was "lucky" to suffer from blurred vision in his left eye which prevented him from going directly into the infantry.
He was "lucky" to have mentioned to a superior that he could speak, read and write German, thanks to his German-immigrant grandparents back in Holstein, Iowa. They subscribed to a German newspaper. As a boy, Clarence read the German paper every week.
While his bilingual ability was good fortune for the Army, Clarence could have remained stateside had he not mentioned it. He had second thoughts while boarding a ship bound for Normandy, France, in 1944.
"Damn fool," he says with a laugh. "I could have stayed in Kansas at Ft. Leavenworth."
Instead, he was attached to a civil affairs unit charged with helping the French build their local economy after their liberation from Germany.
"The French greeted us with open arms for liberating them. I hadn’t done anything. I’d just gotten there!"
He would soon get his chance to do something.
After months of service in France, including a stint in Paris, Clarence was transferred to a new division, the 79th, as it prepared to invade Germany from Luxembourg. The 25-year-old farmhand from Holstein put his mouth to work.
The Russians were keeping the German Army occupied on the east, while U.S. forces were advancing from the west.
"Damn Hitler had to fight everybody," says Clarence. "The Russians, I think, took the bulk of the German Army’s attention, so we had an advantage."
Clarence’s tasks involved communicating with German troops and, occasionally, their officers.
"I’d call on German soldiers to surrender," he says, repeating commands and pleas he used often in early 1945. "I’d tell them there was no use in fighting any longer. I told them they’d go to a prison camp where they would be fed."
While Clarence didn’t have formal German training, he’d frequently heard it at home. Both his paternal grandparents came from
Germany. His grandfather, who arrived in the United States at age 9, spoke English fluently. His grandmother spoke English, but not without what he called a "German brogue."
"And she always told me I couldn’t speak High German correctly," he says.
Clarence communicated efficiently enough on the front lines, however, and came home December 7, 1945, with the rank of sergeant. He had spent nearly half of his three-year tour overseas.
"I got promoted to sergeant in Europe. And I got the Combat Infantry Badge and never shot a German soldier."
In fact, he probably saved lives. The enemy, you could argue, was "lucky" Clarence was around.
"My best memory from the war, I suppose, was just the fact I saved some German soldiers from getting shot," he says.
Clarence came home to help his father on the farm. He toiled there, raising corn and soybeans and marketing cattle and hogs for more than a decade before leaving for University of Iowa, where he studied German as an undergraduate.
In 1967, he graduated from the University of Iowa School of Law. "Who would hire a 40-year-old attorney straight out of college?" he asks. "Rather than get a job with a firm, I began working for the Internal Revenue Service."
The former Army interpreter spent the next 18 years in the estate and gift tax division for the IRS. He retired in 1985.