Dutch Ehret is enjoying life.
“I’ve had a lot of good years. They were all good to me,” said the 94-year-old who celebrated his birthday on April 10. “I’ve stayed healthy, and I’m in good shape, and it’s just great to be alive.”
Ehret is a native of Gretna, Louisiana, which lies on the west bank of the Mississippi River, just east and across the river from uptown New Orleans.
He was born at his childhood home.
“My mother had a midwife to deliver all the children, and (the midwife) lived on the same block. She lived on the end of Newton Street, and we lived on the beginning,” Ehret said. “So whenever my mother was ready to have a child, she would get on the phone to the midwife and say, ‘Can you come over now? I’m ready to deliver a child.’ She made five telephone calls and had five children.”
Ehret was born Louis Vernon Ehret Jr., but he went by the name Dutch, which came from his family’s German ancestry.
“I was born on my father’s birthday, so they called me Louis Ehret Jr., but I never used that name at all,” he said.
His grandfather, John Ehret, migrated from Germany to Gretna, which at that time was a village of German immigrants. John became the first mayor of Gretna in the 1890s.
“That was before elections, so he was nominated by the governor of Louisiana,” said Ehret.
Today, there is a school named after Ehret’s grandfather in Marrero, Louisiana.
Ehret attended Gretna Elementary School, where he was his salutatorian of his sixth-grade class.
“We graduated and had a little dedication for graduates, and I was salutatorian and I was supposed to make a welcoming speech to the people that came,” he said. “When the principal introduced me to give the little speech, I got stage fright and didn’t say a word.”
With a laugh, Ehret said the principal had to talk for him and told the attendees about what a good student he was, so it turned out OK for the shy sixth-grader.
After graduating from Gretna High School, Ehret spent about a half of a year at Loyola University and then for a year attended Soule College, where he studied shorthand, typing and bookkeeping. Then in 1943, he was drafted into service by the U.S. Army.
The first year he trained at different camps in Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina and New Jersey.
In January 1944, he shipped out on The Queen Mary with about 14,000 troops. Ehret served in the 29th Infantry Division, also known as the “Blue and Gray,” referring to the combat service identification badge the troops wore. Ehret still carries the blue-and-gray badge with him in his wallet.
After the trip across the Atlantic, the troops arrived in Scotland and then traveled to England, where they began training in different parts of the country.
With the 29th Division, Ehret fought in four major battles, including Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland and Central Europe. He earned four medals for his three-year service.
Ehret remembers arriving with the 29th in Normandy, France, on June 9, 1944, three days after D-Day. He also remembers the 29th meeting the Russians at the Elbe River in May 1945.
Ehret recalls some of the unusual parts of war, such as sleeping in foxholes or not being able to shower for long stretches of time.
“We slept in the field,” he said. “We were in the field all the time, and our general — Gen. (Charles) Gerhardt — said he didn’t want any of his troops going into German homes. When he said something, you did what he said.”
The troops would dig foxholes to sleep in, many times in cold weather.
“Sometimes we had 3 or 4 feet of snow in Northern Germany, and you couldn’t dig foxholes then,” Ehret said. “You had to stay above ground, and you had to put some kind of protection over the top of you. You got used to it, and we had overcoats and had long johns.”
For bathing, the soldiers would use water from a lake or pond that they collected in their steel helmets.
“I didn’t, but some of the men in our unit had beards, and they had to shave with cold water,” said Ehret. “We had no heat or anything like that. They used to shave and scream while they were shaving.”
Ehret remembers on some occasions homemade showers were set up for the troops.
“They had water running through, and it had a little handle, and you pulled the handle and it would drizzle water on you, and that’s about the most shower we got,” he said.
One time during the war, he and a friend had quite the adventure, starting with a furlough in Paris.
They took in all the sights and sounds of the area, and then asked someone at the Red Cross, “What could a couple of GIs do?”
They were told about a dance at a hotel and given tickets to attend.
“They had some American music being played, so we decided to go ahead and go,” said Ehret.
They went to the dance and had a great night, he said. After the band finished playing, the friends met up and realized the girls they had been dancing with during the event were sisters.
The sisters invited them to visit their home in Monaco.
“It was really off-limits for American troops,” he said.
The sisters told them to get off the train before the Monaco exit, and they would meet them there. The two soldiers boarded the train and took the exit the sisters suggested. Their welcoming party was a little larger than expected.
“And they were there — the mother and the father and the three daughters,” said Ehret. “So we got in their cars and traveled to their home in Monaco, and they lived in a gorgeous home overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.”
The soldiers spent three days and three nights there.
“We had a super time,” said Ehret. “They all spoke English. Two of the daughters played piano music, and they had American records. They treated us like heroes.”
Ehret said the mother wrote to his mother in Gretna, and he still has the letter.
“They were very proud of the Americans and happy we could visit them during the war years,” he said. “It was a sweet letter.”
During the war, Ehret said the troops rarely took pictures, and he only has one picture of himself in uniform, taken “somewhere in Germany.”
“There were no cameras in our group,” he said.
Ehret’s service ended on Jan. 12, 1946, and he returned home to Gretna. He began working for Gulf Oil Co. On May 1, 1948, he married “a little Italian girl,” Mary Manale. The Ehrets had three daughters, Nancy, Susan and Janet.
It was through Gulf Oil, the Ehrets came to Greenwood. Ehret was transferred to Mississippi shortly after he married.
The family lived in Gulfport and Hattiesburg, then moved to Greenwood in 1961, where it stayed put, except for a couple of years in Jackson.
Ehret worked as a retail marketer for Gulf Oil for 35½ years until his retirement in 1983.
“I enjoyed it very much,” he said. “It was the only job I ever had.”
•Contact Ruthie Robison at 581-7233 or rrobison@gwcommonwealth.com.
