Horace Sharp, known as Jim, was born in White City, Kansas in 1924. He lived on a farm with his parents and four siblings. His father was a farmer, an auctioneer, and a farm implement dealer. He raised cattle and hogs and grew corn, wheat, milo, and other crops. Sharp was young during the Depression and does not remember the hardships associated with that period. He does remember the federal government subsidizing the farmers to raise livestock only to see the government kill and bury the animals. That program provided funds for the farmers. People worked on the WPA [Annotator's Note: Works Progress Administration]. President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin D. Roosevelt] organized the Civilian Conservation Corps for younger boys. Sharp remembers some of those young men working on the family farm. Sharp was educated through the elementary grades at a nearby country school. The school had 15 to 20 students across eight grades with only one teacher. It was about a mile and a half from Sharp's home. He would walk or ride a horse to and from school. He graduated the eighth grade from Garner Grade School. Sharp had just finished family dinner on that Sunday when a radio announcement was made that the Japs [Annotator's Note: contemporaneous derogatory term for the Japanese] were bombing Pearl Harbor. The words reverberated throughout the family then and for years afterward. Sharp was 17 years old and could not join the military. He had a brother in the Army Air Forces and another in the Navy. As soon as he graduated from high school at 18, he was given a farm deferment. Sharp's father was occupied with an Allis-Chalmers farm implement business in Herington. His father also performed auctioneering duties in Herington and could not carry out the farming work. Sharp got a 1C draft deferment as a result. That allowed him to work on production of food for the troops. Although he initially accepted the deferment, after about six months, he saw most of his friends who had gone into the service were casualties of the fighting. He decided it was time for him to go into the military and help. He volunteered and went to Fort Leavenworth. He was 19 at the time. The rumor had been that volunteers could pick their service branch. He wanted to go into the Navy but was told that he had to join the Army. He learned that rumors were not always true.

Horace Sharp found himself in the Army on a troop train headed to the southeast [Annotator's Note: Sharp was inducted in Kansas]. He arrived at Fort McClellan, Alabama for his basic infantry training. He did not know what he was doing, but he followed orders and found that he received some very helpful training. That was particularly true in terms of training in discipline, team work and time management. Those things helped him throughout his life. After 13 weeks of training, he was told it was time for him to go and win the war. He completed his training in October or November 1944. Feeling that nothing would be worse than the infantry, he and two buddies volunteered for the paratroopers and were sent to Fort Benning, Georgia. After a physical examination, the doctor told Sharp that the arches in his feet were not suitable for the prospective assignment. With the 100 pound weight of the gear to be carried during the jump and the subsequent landings, it would not be long before his feet gave him severe problems. The process of applying for the paratroops had taken two weeks and saved him from fighting on the front lines during that time. That may have saved his life. He was sent to the port of embarkation at Boston, Massachusetts. As he went up the gangplank with his duffle bag, Red Cross ladies handed him a "ditty bag" which was a small bag with a drawstring. Inside was candy, a comb, a pencil and a notepad. He ate the gum and candy but wondered what he would do with the other items. The ship was packed with troops. It was difficult to move about. Sharp found his bunk which was one of the many five high stacked bunks. He lay in it and began to write his military service diary in the notepad. He retained that notebook and it formed the basis for his book, The Diary of a Combat Infantryman. Although it was illegal to keep a diary in combat, Sharp was careful. He never committed anything in writing that would jeopardize his buddies should he be captured or killed by the enemy. The trip across the Atlantic was melancholy. The men did not know if they would return. They were part of a 40 ship convoy. It was quiet on the ocean until destroyer escorts circled the transports and dropped depth charges several times. There were supposedly u-boats [Annotator's Note: German submarines] in the area. Sharp did not know if the destroyers had actually seen a submarine or not. No convoy ships were sunk.

Horace Sharp arrived in Le Havre, France following his deployment from the United States. The town was utterly destroyed. He had never seen anything like it. When he queried a British seaman about the destruction, the sailor told him that it was the result of American bombing attacks two days after the Germans had evacuated. The intelligence was bad and the town suffered as a result. The Allies were in the process of reconstructing the facilities there. After passing through the ruins, the troops arrived at a troop train. The French engineer asked where they were going. They responded that they were headed to the front lines. The Frenchman told them to hurry because the Germans had attacked and broken through the lines and were winning the war. It was December 1944 and January 1945, the Battle of the Bulge. Sharp was an unassigned replacement at the time. He reached Give, France which is on the border with Belgium. There, he learned that he was being assigned to the Company B, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. He was further assigned to 1st squad, 1st platoon in Company B. There were holes in the American lines following the German attack. Whole regiments had surrendered to the Germans. The situation was fluid with little communication. His first combat was in the middle of the night. The men rode jeeps into the Ardennes Forest within a mile of the front line. The vehicles could not carry them any closer. Sergeant Andrew Zeelish [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] was Sharp's platoon leader and could speak German. The new arrivals were taken to foxholes with roofs over to top. That served as protection from air bursts. Zeelish oriented the three or four new men the best that he could. Zeelish found out that none of the men spoke German so he taught them six words that could save their lives or get them killed. He taught them to say "Kommen Sie mit den Händen hierher" or "come here with your hands over your head." That was the first words in German that Sharp learned. Sharp was put in a foxhole where the previous occupants had been killed. It was the middle of the night and cold. He did not know which way to go to get out of there. Will Rodgers [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] was in the same foxhole with Sharp. Rodgers was from Kentucky. Both men were inexperienced. Early the next morning, they were told that they were going on the attack. Snow capes were provided and Sharp was told by Zeelish that he would ride the first tank with him. When the tankers started their engines, enemy artillery fire erupted. An hour later, five men and Zeelish were on the tank attacking a tiny village. That was the first time Sharp had fired his weapon in combat. He saw the first dead German and American during the action. Sharp saw a wounded German who was immobile. The injured soldier waved a white handkerchief so that the tank would not roll over him. The advancing armor avoided the incapacitated enemy. The little village was taken and the men had a brief respite afterward. Then there was an advance toward Honsfeld, Belgium. The first day after capturing the crossroads, the unit surrounded some Germans. The Americans thought they were soldiers. As Sharp and his unit tried digging into the frozen ground, someone shouted that German tanks were approaching. The Americans used their rifles, machine guns and bazookas to pin down the tank. The enemy had manned a captured American tank. They were attempting to advance to see if they could get through. They did get beyond the defenders. The Germans machine gunned the Americans as they went through. The Americans were pinned down in 18 inches of snow as the Germans broke through. The bazooka rounds would simply bounce off the tank as the enemy escaped back to Honsfeld. Sergeant Zeelish said they needed to deploy a patrol. There were more Germans nearby. Sharp was to lead the patrol. The patrol crossed a field in late afternoon. No Germans were there. They were still behind the platoon. Soon another tank advanced on them. It was a tracked vehicle with machine guns and several soldiers in the rear. It escaped to Honsfeld. That was the next town to be captured. Sharp had only been on the line for two days. He had already seen some horrible things. Tanks were being blown up around him. Honsfeld was captured the next day. They were located within five miles of the Siegfried Line. Sharp's unit was pulled back to a location where they patrolled more. Sharp assessed the German soldier as generally superior to him and many of the Americans. They had more training and better weapons for the most part. The enemy grenades enabled them to throw them with an overhead motion unlike the training for the Americans with their grenades. The Panzerfaust was an anti-tank weapon. The German machine guns fired more rapidly than the Americans'. [Annotator's Note: Sharp simulates the rapid fire of the German machine gun versus the slower firing American counterpart.] The German 88s [Annotator's Note: 88mm multipurpose artillery gun] and their tanks were superior to the American counterparts. Sharp did find the M1 rifle superior to the German rifle. The American tankers were afraid of the Panthers and Tigers [Annotator's Note: German Mark V Panther and Mark VI Tiger main battle tanks]. Sharp was fearful of the enemy tanks as well.

Horace Sharp and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company B, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division] moved forward into Germany during the month of January [Annotator's Note: 1945]. They were located near the Rhine River at Duisburg, Germany. His battalion then captured Bonn on the Rhine River. Following the battle, they were in the process of cleaning up enemy snipers and stragglers when the bridge over the Rhine was blown up. Sharp heard and saw the structure's destruction. The men were granted a well deserved rest for a day. Unexpectedly, there were orders to divert their direction 20 miles upriver to Remagen. A bridge had been captured there. They were ordered to rush to that crossing. They discovered a massive traffic jam when they arrived. The infantry had priority to get to the opposite side of the river. Sharp and his outfit went across the river at night over a pontoon bridge. They entered the railroad tunnel at the opposite side of the river. The war was sounding very close to them. Sharp observed a non-commissioned officer with battle fatigue. The non-com said he had been prematurely released from the hospital. He said he was not ready to be at the front. Sharp reported the situation to Sergeant Zeelish [Annotator's Note: Sergeant Andrew Zeelish was Sharp's platoon sergeant] and the shaken man was removed from the combat zone. There was chaos in the fighting. It was hard to distinguish who was who in the struggle. There were many casualties. Some of those injured or killed resulted from friendly fire. A two by four mile foothold was established on the opposite side of the Rhine River. The river was massive. Three ships abreast could transit the river. Sharp had never seen anything like it. He had read about the Black Forest and the Hürtgen Forest but not so much about the Ardennes where there was heavy fighting. Once the Rhine was crossed, events transpired quickly. Letters from home said the war was nearing its end. Sharp could not tell that at the front where he was under constant incoming fire from the enemy. Remagen was in March and the war did not end until May [Annotator's Note: May 1945]. Half the time, Sharp and his unit would ride on tanks. That was mostly during the day. At night, the infantrymen would advance as ground troops. German civilians were evacuating toward the west where the fighting had stopped. The Americans were tossing grenades into basements. Some civilians were caught up in that fighting. The havoc was a mess. If the civilians put out flags, the Germans would shoot or hang them. No one could surrender until Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] told them to. The whole country was blown to hell. Sharp later felt sorry for the Germans. Sharp forgot his basic training and got to the point of ceasing to hate the enemy. He met up with the Russians at the Elbe River. Hitler was supposedly holding out in the Harz Mountains. The 1st Infantry Division was ordered to Bavaria to meet the threat. The last town captured was Sangerberg, Czechoslovakia in the Sudetenland. A defensive position, including foxholes, was established just outside of town. Sharp was leading a patrol toward the enemy lines as a squad leader. Civilians were passing the squad. As he was making his way to an army camp outside of Sangerberg, an American tanker announced to Sharp and his men that the war was over.

Horace Sharp and his squad [Annotator's Note: 1st Squad, 1st Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division] had been ordered to go to an enemy camp [Annotator's Note: near Sangerberg, Czechoslovakia] and continued on despite hearing that the war was over. Upon arrival in the small camp, they found three or four German soldiers. Local civilians were looting the camp. When the Americans were about to depart, machine gun fire erupted. Everyone scrambled. No one wanted to be killed after the end of the war so Sharp and his men took the prisoners out of harm's way and headed back to the American camp. They managed to find a wine cellar and celebrated the good news. [Annotator's Note: Sharp chuckles.] Sharp was in the Sudetenland during this time. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] had taken the area over in 1938. Sharp had taken note of that in his book [Annotator's Note: Sharp authored The Diary of a Combat Infantryman based on his wartime diary]. The Russians were four miles away from his position. Germans were fleeing the Red Army toward the American lines. Sharp and his men were positioned at an outpost. They were not being supplied with water so they decided to go down to a town below and find some. When they entered the town, German soldiers were discovered. There were men and women who wanted to surrender to the Americans. Orders were to take no more prisoners. Instead, the individuals wanting to give up were to stay in-place and let others sort out the situation. A farmer in town not only supplied water but also invited the men in for cheese and wine and offered them a comfortable down mattress to sleep on that night. The Americans accepted his offer and slept with their clothes on and with rifles close by. They had effectively abandoned their position as a result of accepting the sleeping arrangement that night. Lieutenant Williams [Annotator's Note: no given name provided] told his men to report back to their assigned location. The Germans wanted the Americans to stay rather than have the Russians occupy the town. The German who had befriended Sharp said that he would make sure they had plenty of beef steaks if they remained there. Sharp often wondered what happened to that German after the Russians showed up. He may have been shot or lost everything he had. There was an attractive woman working for him. She poured water for the men on that early morning they spent in the German's home. Sharp later searched for SS and Nazi officials in a 20 mile area. The battalion commander had a list of names for the vicinity. If the individuals were found, they were to be arrested and brought in for interrogation. The Americans would go out in pairs and knock on doors at midnight to find the culprits. These were the people responsible for starting the war. Some were found and brought in for interrogation. These were not the Nuremburg war criminals but largely the levels of bureaucrats and politicians below them. No one admitted to the Americans that they had been in the Nazi Party. Many were former SS and retired officials. Sharp arrested five or six of the many who were ultimately arrested. The American troops took over German housing at this time instead of being billeted in barracks.

Horace Sharp and his men were billeted in former SS barracks when they reached Nuremburg. He had been rounding up SS and Nazis prior to that posting. He was moved to Nuremburg because his Company B was to provide guard duty. [Annotator's Note: Sharp was a sergeant and a squad leader in Company B, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. His company would be guarding the Nazi war crimes defendants at the Nuremburg Trials which began in November 1945.] Noncommissioned officers were sought as leaders for the Nuremburg Trials guard details. It sounded interesting to Sharp. He would be witness to the trial of the leading Nazis. Captain Miller [Annotator's Note: no given name provided] said he would nominate four of his NCOs for the posting. Half the guys were interested but some just wanted to go home. Sharp did not have enough points so he was not able to go home at that time. Sharp had entered combat as a replacement. He told his captain that he would be interested in the assignment. Captain Miller supported his nomination. There was a series of interviews prior to selection. Sharp acknowledged that he did not know anything about the Geneva Convention. Even still, the interviewers were impressed sufficiently with Sharp such that he was selected for the duty. Sharp had learned enough German to enable him to communicate with the German prisoners. The prisoners under Sharp's responsibility were very intelligent and spoke English. Even though he was not familiar with the Geneva Conventions, Sharp knew enough about how to treat prisoners of war. He was selected and served as Sergeant of the Guard for seven months. Sharp was fascinated by Adolf Hitler and his blitzkrieg tactics. The city of Nuremburg had been 95 percent destroyed but the building for the courtroom was just 60 percent damaged. It nevertheless required significant repair. Much of the work was done by massive numbers of skilled German prisoners of war. The building was put back into good shape despite being hit. Sharp first encountered the political and Nazi prisoners after they had been collected in Nuremburg. He saw them initially during an orientation session when they were outside in the recreation and exercise area. There were 22 men including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Von Ribbentrop, Keitel, and Jodl [Annotator's Note: all high level Nazi political and military defendants at the Nuremburg Trial]. Upon his first view of them, Sharp did not detect anything special about the individuals. When he became more acquainted with them, he wondered how this all happened. They appeared to him to be just family men. As Sergeant of the Guard, Sharp would assign and supervise the guards to their postings. He would not personally oversee any individual defendant under his responsibility. There was weekly guard rotation at the courtroom. Sharp would either be inside the courtroom or immediately outside while his guards were posted. Security guards were both inside and outside the court building. Three different groups were involved in the rotation over a weekly period. There was a week off after the week on guard duty. Sharp was cognizant of the activities inside the courtroom. When a particular event or discussion of interest came up, he would attend the session. He was interested in things related to concentration camps they liberated or the Rhine River Bridge that was blown up. He attended sessions when he was off duty. Four language translations were available in the court. A selection on the seat provided translations in English, French, Russian, or German. Sharp had a particular interest in General von Staulus [Annotator's Note: Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus] who was captured at Stalingrad. Despite Hitler's offer of promotions, he was the first general captured. The German not only surrendered but testified against the rest of the defendants. Although the proceedings in the courtroom were orderly, they would turn political at times when the Russians expressed their bitter feelings toward the Germans. Stalin [Annotator's Note: Russian dictator Joseph Stalin] said that he felt the defendants should not stand trial. He wanted the top 25,000 German officers executed so that their country could not wage war again. The Germans and the Russians maintained a bitter and mutual hatred for each other. The Germans were very brutal toward the Russians and the latter responded accordingly. Sharp had captured German prisoners offer to join the Americans in fighting against the Russians. The German civilians hated the Americans for bombing them, but they hated the Russians even more. Sharp and his guards were in charge of escorting the prisoners to the courtroom and to interrogations by their lawyers in preparation of their defense. They watched while the prisoners went to the restroom. The guards searched the defendants' cells. The prisoners could not do anything without permission from the guards.

Horace Sharp had communications with the German defendants at the Nuremburg Trials. [Annotator's Note: Sharp was a member of Company B, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division and was Sergeant of the Guard at the Nuremburg Trials for seven months during which he met and conversed with several of the defendants.] They were well educated and spoke English. The Germans had a desire to speak with their guards, but, initially conversations were forbidden except for business purposes. Eventually, the restrictions would break down and Sharp would get autographs from the defendants while they awaited defense planning meetings with their lawyers. Sharp would accompany his guard who watched over the prisoner. The Americans and Germans would exchange details of their personal lives. Sharp was interested in the history so with no one watching over him, he would get into conversation with the Germans on an irregular basis. Hermann Göring was the most interesting. Göring proposed that he was just serving his country and did not do anything illegal. He would hypothesize that Sharp was the same as he. Neither man, he proposed, had done anything illegal during their military service. Göring felt he followed orders and even though he was second in Nazi command, he was merely doing what he had been ordered to do. Sharp also found the SS man, Kaltenbrunner [Annotator's Note: Ernst Kaltenbrunner was head of the Reich Main Security Office] interesting. He was right behind Heinrich Himmler in command of the SS following Heydrich's death [Annotator's Note: Reinhard Heydrich was a major architect of the Final Solution and was assassinated in Czechoslovakia in 1942]. Sharp did not get to know Kaltenbrunner very well. He was a sickly man, probably due to stress. Rudolf Hess was an enigma. He was sometimes conversational and sometimes not. He had tried to get the Allies to sign a peace treaty with Germany. The Allies tried to keep Hess' mission from the Russians. The defendants asserted that the trials would not be fair. Sharp was influenced by their opinion. As a consequence of the Trials, precedents were established that carry through today. Orders that are illegal need not be followed. Sharp eventually realized that all the war crimes were not committed just on one side. Both sides were responsible for activities not in keeping with commonly held rules of war. Some of the people on the Allied side should have been brought to trial. Germany was continuously bombed at the end of the war despite having no defensive aircraft. The cities with all their services and supplies were demolished. One high level bomber commander stated that the remaining ordnance in England had to be utilized. War does not solve problems. It only creates more problems. Injured veterans return and have to be treated. It was a foregone conclusion that the Trial defendants would be found guilty. They were the losers of the war and would be treated accordingly. None of the defendants told Sharp that they would rather die as opposed to being executed. He was not in attendance at the conclusion of the Trial and did not hear the verdicts. He was a participant there for the first seven months. His term spanned in multiple increments. It was first three months, then an added three months. After that, he was asked to stay and agreed to one more month, but had to depart to enroll in the next semester. Following that month, he was ready to return to the United States for college.

Horace Sharp was discharged in May 1946 after his return to the United States. He attended college using the G.I. Bill at Kansas State. Sharp graduated with a degree in Business Administration and went to work with the Kansas Farm Bureau. He became Manager of Information Systems prior to retiring in 1986. He received a PhD from IBM [Annotator's Note: International Business Machines] schools. He did his own consulting as a systems and database analyst, and strategic planner for seven years. He maintained an interest in the course of the Nuremburg Trials even after his discharge [Annotator's Note: Sharp had been Sergeant of the Guard at the Nuremburg Trials for seven months of the Trials before returning home]. He was especially interested in Hermann Göring [Annotator's Note: Göring was second in command of the Nazi Party and the highest ranking Nazi defendant at the Trials]. Göring committed suicide the day he was to be hung. Sharp anticipated that Colonel Andrus [Annotator's Note: Colonel Burton C. Andrus was prison commandant during the Trials] was going to prosecute every guard there. The guards were committed to not letting any of the defendants off the hook. Sharp served with the man he thinks gave the pill to Göring. His name was Harvey Lee Stivers [Annotator's Note: Herbert Lee Stivers] from Hesperia, California. The Army does not agree with Sharp's assessment. Stivers was a good soldier. He had a German girlfriend named Mona. She found out her beau was a guard at Nuremburg. She had friends who were friends of Göring. They asked Mona if Stivers would take medicine to Göring. Their assertion was that the guards were not providing correct medications for Göring. Medicine was transferred in a ballpoint pen. Göring sent a message back asking for more medicine. The second or third time, the pen carried cyanide for Göring. The lead Nazi sent a letter to the Tribunal that he was a brave soldier who disagreed with the death by hanging verdict. He thought execution by a firing squad would be appropriate while a hanging would be disrespectful of his military career and his country. The Tribunal rejected his proposal. They assumed that he was under their control. Hermann [Annotator's Note: Sharp refers to Göring by his given name] was smarter. He said he had the cyanide pill all the time so as not to incriminate Stivers or Mona. The Army investigated and found that he did possess the poison beforehand. The Army did not agree with Sharp's evaluation, but Sharp maintains his opinion of the parties who participated in Göring's suicide.