For many years after he returned home Clarence “Shorty” Goodwin wouldn’t talk about his years in the Army. Not even to his father or his wife.

But he said that the faith that guided him through the years he spent in Europe during WWII has led him to share his story with others, so they might be able to see the wondrous miracles of God.

He grew up in Pinson and while in high school he received a letter that read: “Congratulations, you have been selected by your friends and neighbors to serve in the United Sates Army.”

He trained in Texas in 120-degree weather. That training was to prepare his unit to go and fight in North Africa, which had a similar climate.

His unit spent three weeks in combat in Africa. The German soldiers soon surrendered. Shorty recalls watching them approach the American troops with their suitcases and clothes in hand.

“They wanted to go to America,” Shorty said. Adolph Hitler hadn’t prepared his troops for an evacuation of Africa “and here we were trying to get to Germany.”

After a bit more training his unit was the first American Army battalion selected to land in Europe in Southern Italy.

“There were no shells or bombs until we landed,” Shorty said. The Axis forces waited until the huge doors swung down on the amphibious landing craft before they opened fire.

Shorty was in water over his head and was carrying 120 pounds of equipment on his back along with his machine gun in his hands. “I didn’t weigh that much more than my pack. Bullets were flying all over.”

He was one of only seven soldiers that made it out of the landing boat alive. “I was wondering how all this was happening. I’m not hit. It just wasn’t my time. I can see a lot of that today, but I couldn’t then.”

After landing he was chosen to be among 20 men that would hold the American line and wait for the other units to arrive. Intelligence informed the Americans that the  Germans were to attack at six o’clock. The rest of his unit helped Shorty and the others dig foxholes and they were given three days worth of food.

They could see the river right in front of them where the Germans were expected to approach. “Little did we know that the river was one foot deep,” he said. German tanks and troops arrived at six, as expected. He and his fellow soldiers were to hold them off for three hours.

The second day passed, then the third. Officers on radio told Shorty and the others “You’re doing great. Stay there. Stay there at all costs. We need you.”

But the couldn’t hold out and the Americans were forced to surrender. Shorty said he was standing before the Germans with his hands up. The Germans had the guns. Shorty had “no country, no funds, nothing. I’m at the mercy of these people.” He said it was at that time that he heard a voice speak to him and said, “I’m with you.”

“There was a peace that came over me that I can’t explain. I still have that peace today,” he said.

He was interrogated. He was asked many questions, but his only response could be his name, rank and serial number. The German officer interrogating him held a strait pin to a cigarette lighter. German soldiers held Shorty’s hand down on the table. The pin was inserted into his right thumb, just under his fingernail.

Bullets began to rain down into the room through the ceiling from an American Airplane. The Germans hit the deck. “As you can see, none of those bullets were mine,” the 87 year old said.

Shorty walked for 17 days through Italy before he was put on a train and sent into the pass in Munich Germany. He walked for 84 days from Munich to Poland. Food was scarce. Shorty said he sees more food thrown away in dumpsters outside restaurants then he and his fellow solders had to eat in a month during their march.

“It’s just almost unreal,” he said of the horrors he saw while inside occupied lines. Women and girls were brutally attacked in the streets. Men were hung along the roadside. There were other atrocities he saw that included the depths man will go to in order to survive. “Some people are saying now that the Holocaust never happened,” he said. “I know it did… I’m here today and I’m alive to tell that it did happen.”

He attempted escape four times and was recaptured for each endeavor. After one attempt, he was to face the firing squad. The riflemen walked out and they were given the orders of “ready, aim…” and Shorty was thinking “you pushed it further this time. You’ve pushed it too far. Then the firing squad lowered their guns and the officer in charge asked him in English “Are you going to work now?” He was spared again.

At one point during his captivity he was placed in a hole that was not big enough to stand up in, and not wide enough to sit down. He figures he was in there for 15 days. The only light he saw during that time was when the hole was opened up and he was given a potato or a slice of bread. “I had seen guys go in to those places and came out not knowing their own name,” Shorty said. So he played baseball in his head to keep his mind sharp. “I would go through each inning. Sometimes there would be nine, ten or extra innings. I would think about my mother preparing meals. So, when I came out I still had my right mind. But there are thoughts… The psychiatrists said after I got out that in five years you’re supposed to forget those type things. If you’re not a POW, you don’t understand that don’t work. God gave me my sanity [and salvation].” He has led four psychiatrists to Christ over the many years since he’s been back on American soil. The most recent was a Chinese woman.

While in an internment camp he began to have horrible pains and told another American about them. He was told that the man sitting a few yards from them was a Russian doctor. “I convinced him enough to understand what was going on and he’s telling me he can remove my appendix. He thinks. He’s seen it done before.”

They moved the cow out of the barn at the camp and Shorty laid down in the straw. The doctor used a small piece of metal about the side of a silver dollar that he had kept sharp by rubbing it against different surfaces. There was no anesthesia. The surgery began. “I passed out. I could’ve been there all day or two or three hours.” When he came he was sewn back together on his side with the string from a feed sack from the barn. He had no infection.

A week later those in the camp were put on the march because the Russians were approaching. He walked 350 miles while helping to carry two men on either side of him because if they fell behind, they would be shot. He escaped and made it to the Russian front lines. They wanted to send him to Siberia. “You don’t make it out of Siberia,” Shorty said. He persuaded them to give him a gun and he found himself headed back in with the Germans with America’s then-allies, the Russians.

When he finally got back stateside he was given a ticket to Birmingham. His home in Pinson was 22 miles away from the station in the Steel City. He had two baths in the two years he had been in captivity. They were when he had jumped into rivers trying to escape. He had no money when he arrived in Birmingham. Shorty guesses that there were probably not five telephones in Pinson at that time, so he began walking to his hometown and arrived at 1:30 in the morning.

He spent his nineteenth and twentieth birthdays in captivity. During that time he said he would pray “Lord let me put my arms around my mom one more time,” Shorty said. When he met her at home he hugged her. She put her arms around him and fainted. “It was a great feeling that I made it that far and God granted me that one wish.”

Shorty lives on Lake Logan Martin with his wife, Joyce “Bitt,” who he has been married to for 62 years come this July. They attend First Baptist Church in Pell City.