Yust!

Michelle: Did you have a translator with you?

Colonel: Oh yeah, Lemoine.

Michelle: What was he like?

Colonel: He was a good kid. Personal young man. He knew that he was doing. I don’t know how many languages he spoke, but he knew everything.

Sara: I have forgotten about that other man that took care of you so good. The one from New York.

Colonel: Yust! 

Sara: Yust!

Colonel: We were in Camp McCoy, Wisconsin and they were filling in vacancies...transfers... new people joining the outfield as we prepared to go overseas. We had a few vacancies they filled in. And they shipped in this one kid and he was late checking in. And the First Sargent looked up at him and said, “Where have you been?”. And he, in his Swedish accent, said “I yust got here!”. From that day on, he was known as “Yust”. Everyone in the outfield knew his as “Yust”. “Yust!” No one knew his name! He was a PFC. Private First Class. Turned out that Yust was Evoug Green - a native born Sweed. Naturalized in the United States and enlisted in the Army.

Sara: His wife’s name was Elsie. She was a dancer in New York and a beautiful, beautiful lady. We got to be friends with her and they came down to see us.

Colonel: Yust was a character. We had crossed the Sauer River and its February 1945. Bitter cold, nasty, ugly. We were in a wooded area crawling up, no leaves on the trees, just brush... uh, there was a pill box up there and we wanted to get that pill box.  Take it, so we could live in it briefly at least and so on. So I’m crawling along through the brush, through the leaves and sticks and everything on my belly. I don’t want to stand up. Swanson’s over here [points to his left] and Nok is over here [points to his right] and we’re all working our way up. And here comes Yust right beside me and its 2 o’clock in the morning. And he gets up and gets a hold of my shoulder. And I turn to him and he says, “Captain, if we ever get out of here, I’m going to ask Elsie to marry me and I want you to be my Best Man.” At 2 o’clock in the morning! Middle of February! Snow! Bitter cold! Germans are dropping mortar shell's all over the place! And this Sweed wants me to be his best man! I said to him, 'You can count on it, Yust!' and we went on. 

Michelle: What was the wedding like?

Colonel: It was small. In New York City. Very nice, very nice. Who was the Orchestra at the Roosevelt?

Sara: Roosevelt Hotel?

Colonel: Lawrence Welk! At that time.

Sara: So we had beautiful music! It was nice because we were part of the wedding.

Colonel: Yust is gone. He was my good friend up until he left us. Parkinson’s took him. Extended period of time. Cremation. And we went up and his son had retained a boat to take the remains 3 miles out. The daughter and son were there. We quietly went out. Late afternoon. And as the sun went down, going down on the horizon, the boat stopped and they scattered the remains. And so the daughter had brought along a tape player. So after the remains were scattered, she played the appropriate tape. And we just sat there as it got darker, and darker, finally we came back in.