"At the end of the day we would all be white like someone had thrown a sack of flour on us," he said.ĭuring more difficult times, Abrego and his comrades survived on K-rations, hard chocolate and small cheese sandwiches. "The worst thing that I saw there was a young mother with babies and children fight for the food that was thrown away," he said.Īt the time, DDT insecticide powder, then thought to be harmless to humans, was used to clean lice off the victims. I wanted to be a surgical technician," he said.Ībrego was sent to help liberate concentration camps, with the job of cleaning and feeding the victims they were able to save. But his superior officers had other plans: He was assigned to be a medic. It only lasted for about an hour."Ībrego had his sights set on joining the infantry and heading to the front line. "We got there during an air raid, and they wouldn't let us leave until it was over," he said. He reached his destination at 4 a.m., and the conditions weren’t good. I couldn't hold any food or water," said Abrego, who noted more than 14,000 men were on the ship with him.Īfter arriving in Scotland, Abrego was sent to London. The Aquatania took 10 days to get from New York to Scotland, and he had a terrible bout with seasickness. Abrego enlisted in 1942, going first to Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, then overseas by ship. "I enlisted into the Army for three reasons: It fascinated me, there was food and because they were going to get me anyway," he said.Ībrego's older brother, Guillermo, enlisted in the Army Air Force a few weeks after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. He ended up learning English by the time that he was 8 and graduated from Martin High School in Laredo in 1942.Ībrego says he’d always wanted to join the Army, even when he was a little boy. "I didn't understand what the teacher was saying," Abrego said. His biggest problem, he said, was that he spoke only Spanish. "I just thought that was the way it is: white men getting the best jobs," he said.
As a child growing up in Laredo, he says he indirectly faced discrimination in school. Tragedy stuck him and his family when his older brother was killed in an airplane crash on Tinian Island, part of the Mariana Islands group, in the Pacific.īy the time the private returned home and resumed his life, he’d lost something else to the war: his innocence.Ībrego was born Feb. He’d also be among the troops who liberated prisoners from concentration camps, including Buchenwald.
"It was depressing at night, when you had a chance to feel that way."Ībrego, a native of Laredo, was only 20 years old during the Battle of the Bulge. "Soldiers were going into shock because we couldn't use it."Ībrego, who earned the rank of Private First Class, was personally touched by the deaths he saw.
"It was so cold that the plasma was freezing," he said. Salomon Abrego was at the Battle of the Bulge, where he and his fellow soldiers suffered through one of the coldest winters to hit the area in more than 20 years.Īs a medic, Abrego watched helplessly as the cold ruined some supplies.
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