There's a short list of Americans who interviewed top Nazi leaders in the weeks following victory in World War II's European theater and an even shorter list of Americans who were protected from racial violence in Alabama by Dr. Martin Luther King himself.
But Americans who have done both? That list only has only one name on it--Ken Hechler.
Click here to hear audio of Hechler.
Clips are in MP3 format
Hechler, now 93, of West Virginia, spoke to a group of University of Central Arkansas students Tuesday about his life and times and about the life and times of Marine Paratrooper Orland "Buddy" Jones. Jones was a Conway High School graduate and Arkansas State Teachers' College (now UCA) drama major who was killed in the battle for Iwo Jima.
Hechler wrote a book about Jones, Super Marine!: The Sgt. Orland D. "Buddy" Jones Story, which was published earlier this year.
"I got interested in this young Arkansas soldier Marine I should say because on the 15th of February, 1944, 63 years ago, I was riding a bus between Dallas and Memphis, and when I got to Little Rock this tall, red-headed lady got aboard," Hechler said. "She sat down beside me and began to regale me with a story about her husband (Jones) and about how wonderful his career in the marines had been. I began to hum the line from the Marine Hymn, 'from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.'"
Brief as his dialogue with Helen Lively Jones Catron (the tall, read-headed lady) was, his dialogue with Jones was shorter when the two saw each other, for the first and only time, when the woman got off the bus at Brinkley (Monroe County).
"Suddenly she turned around quickly and instinctively," Hechler writes in Super Marine! "From across the street, a handsome tall Marine bounded over. They ran toward each other and soon all I could see was a mixture of red hair and deeply bronzed skin. The bus started up; she turned and cried to me 'now you can yell it!'
"'GERONIMO!' I shouted. His white teeth glistened."
When the bus arrived at Memphis, Hechler borrowed a typewriter to punch out some notes on his conversation. Those notes, as it worked out, would lay dormant for almost six decades.
A year and a half after his bus ride, Hechler found himself in Nuremburg, Germany. He had received his "greetings" from Uncle Sam, as he puts it in the preface to Super Marine!, "inviting" him to join the U.S. Army. He applied for Coastal Artillery Officer Candidate School, he writes, "certain that the Germans could not fire across the Atlantic," but unaware that the Army sent everyone who applied to Coastal Artillery to tank commander training.
But Hechler wasn't destined to drive tanks.
"I got out of being a tank commander because I love to make musical parodies," he told the UCA students. "I took this World War II song called Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition and made a parody of it called Praise the Lord and Pass Me My Commission.
"The commanding general liked the show so much that he said 'you ought to be doing something more important than just driving a tank. We're going to send you to Europe to become a combat historian."
Part of that job was to go "up and down the front lines and record the critical battles. Not to glorify the Army but to provide lessons learned for West Point and Command and General Staff School."
Once Germany had surrendered and his job on the front lines was wrapped up, he was assigned to interview top Nazi leaders being held at a prisoner of war facility in Nuremburg. One of those he interviewed was Reichmarshall Hermann Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, or German air force, and second-in-command to Adolf Hitler.
"His nickname was 'Fat Stuff,'" Hechler told the students, "and when I said 'I want to interview Hermann Goering,' one of the guards yelled down the hall 'Send Fat Stuff up to Major Hechler!' and somebody else yelled 'Fat Stuff up to Major Hechler!,' just like you'd ordered two fried eggs sunny-side up."
Before he had a chance to ask Goering any questions, the Nazi asked a favor of Hechler, as he recounted to the students:
"He said 'You tell General Ike' he called him (Dwight D. Eisenhower) General Ike 'You tell general Ike that I, Hermann Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe ... That we have here in this enclosure (several other top Nazi generals). You tell General Ike I will personally mobilize the German army, navy and air force; we'll team up with the American Army and we'll beat the hell out of the Russians and you won't have any problems.'"
"Well, what a terrible idea," Hechler told the students, "even though General Patton thought the same thing."
Hechler didn't bother "Ike" with Goering's proposition, but the experience he gained in the war did help him become an advisor to President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953. He later became a nine-term U.S. Congressman, successfully introducing the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety act of 1969. This act, he said, has been gutted by "this guy at 1600 Pensylvania Ave." through reductions in funding for mine inspectors tasked with enforcing it.
In March of 1965, Hechler became the only U.S. Congressman to march with Dr. Martin Luther King and thousands of other civil rights activists from Selma, Ala. to Montgomery, Ala..
He told the students he was travelling through the deep South that month to take "a bunch of Senators and Congressmen" to Cape Canaveral, Fla. for the launch of an Apollo rocket.
"I picked up the morning paper on a Saturday," he told the students. "I began to read about how this wonderful theologian minister was organizing a march from Selma, Ala. to Montgomery. I thought to myself, 'What is really more important to a teacher of political science: To organize a junket to Cape Canaveral or to be on the front lines for the fight for democracy?'"
He hopped a plane to Birmingham, Ala., rented a car, and drove to Selma. Hechler said he'd wanted to travel incognito, but was recognized by a reporter covering the march. The reporter, he said, tipped off Dr. King to the presence of a U.S. Congressman among the marchers.
"(Dr. King) was very very kind to me and he talked to me at length about his plans for the future," Hechler told the students.
As impressed as he was with Dr. King, Hechler was anxious to get back to Washington to participate in a Congressional vote after the march ended in Montgomery. He told the students he didn't want to spoil his 100-percent voting record, but he had left his car back at Selma.
"At the end of the day Dr. King called me over and said 'How are you getting back to Selma?' and I said 'Aw, I can hithchike a ride,' and he said 'It's going to be very dangerous along that highway,' Hechler told the students.
"His prediction was right," he continued, "because later in the week a lady from Detroit named Viola Liuzzo was actually murdered because she had been driving with some black people. So he said 'I've got four bodyguards and I want you to lie down in the floorboard; don't let anybody see you riding with these black people.' So they drove me back.
"I was so impressed with the fact that Dr. King said 'You know, today will be a part of history. Just remember this day.' That struck me and I've always remembered those kind remarks that he made."
Over the last few years, the former Congressman rediscovered the notes on his conversation with Orland Jones' widow and, after some detective work, tracked her to northwest Arkansas. He compiled letters between her and Jones and between Jones and other family members. These letters and dozens of old photographs comprise a large portion of Super Marine!
Speaking on modern times, Hechler said he would advise young people to "keep fighting for justice."
"You know, the preamble to the Constitution is a wonderful thing," he said. "It says 'We the people;' those three words are very important Not 'we the corporations, we the big shots we the lobbyists we the pressure groups' 'We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, what's the first objective? To establish justice.
"That's the advice I'd give to young people. Think about justice and think about how you'd rate public officials on that scale."
"He's like a real-life Forrest Gump, isn't he?," Roger Pauly of the UCA Department of History said of Hechler.
Hechler's appearance was arranged in part by the department. Super Marine! and other books by Hechler are available for purchase at www.kenhechler.us.
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
