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From opposite worlds, two soldiers forged a friendship — and saved each other's lives

Jim Beckerman

Modesty — for a hero — is the best policy.

Soldiers know this. That's why they seldom boast. And that's why, when a story I wrote last year about my uncle's World War II experiences was re-posted on his college website under the headline "Bernard Beckerman's Wartime Heroics," I was faintly embarrassed for him.

He — I felt sure — would never have called himself a hero (he died in 1985). My Uncle Bernie was a professor of Shakespeare. He would have known that the braggart soldier — Miles Gloriosus, Falstaff — comes off badly in literature.

My uncle's war experiences were dramatic, yes: Anzio, Naples, a Bronze Star for bravery in France, the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau. But thousands had similar stories to tell. In his day, the word "hero" was not used so casually.

Well, I was wrong. It turns out Uncle Bernie was a hero.

The drama began — as so much drama does, these days — with a tweet.

Bernard Beckerman

"Sitting in my living room weeping, because I just found this story," it began. It was from somebody named Timothy Lofton in New Orleans. He had just read my article. Could I get in touch with him, right away?

Timothy Lofton, it turned out, was the son of Chuck Lofton. Chuck was the son of Charlie Lofton.

And Charlie Lofton was the guy whose life had been saved, 75 years ago, by my Uncle Bernie.

"There were moments, when we would be having a wedding or a funeral or a baby being born," Tim told me, after we'd introduced ourselves by phone. "And he would just kind of quietly say, 'None of this happens if it's not for Beckerman.' "

"Beckerman" — a very prosaic name around my household — turned out to be quite a magical one in his.

In fairness, it's also quite likely that Charlie, in turn, saved my uncle's life. They were buddies, comrades in arms, during some of the most harrowing episodes of World War II. To my uncle, he was "Charlie." To Charlie, he was "Beckerman."

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"It's lovely, a whole side of my father that I never knew," said Bernie's son, Michael Beckerman, now the Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music at NYU. "This is almost like fiction to me."

Both of these guys, during World War II, saw things that neither could ever forget. And neither saw the other again.

None of this drama had been known by our family. It was only half-known by the Loftons. Neither Bernie nor Charlie, during their lives, talked much about their war experiences. Their generation, famously, didn't.

Only — every once in a while — there was that name. "Beckerman."

Beckerman had saved him at Anzio. He and Beckerman were buddies. He had given Beckerman some Kodak film — so he could load his Brownie camera and document the atrocities of Dachau. 

Charlie Lofton

Timothy Lofton became intrigued — who was this guy Beckerman? Toward the end of his grandfather's life (he died in 2012), Timothy had tracked down the late Bernard Beckerman, a teacher of Shakespeare at Hofstra and Columbia, who had been with the 45th Infantry. That, clearly, must have been his grandfather's long-lost buddy.

But it wasn't until last year, when he found my story online — a story that actually mentioned the Brownie camera, and included some of the Dachau pictures — that Tim Lofton realized the stories he'd heard all his life were true.

"I just started breaking down," Timothy Lofton said. "Because it was all the same story he had told us. Including mentioning the Brownie camera. It was our first time ever seeing those photographs that he wanted us to find so badly."

Country cousin, city cousin

What's striking about the story of Charlie and Bernie is that they were — in the ordinary sense — total opposites. 

Bernard Beckerman

Bernie was book-smart. He was a city kid, New York born and bred, son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. 

Charlie was an Alabama farm boy. Irish protestant, with a country twang. He was good with his hands, knowledgeable in the lore of the land, but with only a sixth-grade education. Certainly, he knew nothing about theater, acting or Shakespeare, my uncle's abiding interests. Beckerman, Charlie had vaguely recalled later, was "in pictures."

Charlie Lofton

They were — in modern terms — classic Blue State, classic Red State. But a defining aspect of their generation was the people from wildly different backgrounds who were flung together in the chaos of war. They had to get to know each other. Learn from each other. Respect each other. And ultimately, depend on each other for survival.

It's an experience we have not had, as Americans, for several generations. Which could explain a lot that's going on in our country right now.

"They were both very young men," said Chuck Lofton — Timothy's dad, Charlie's son, a well-known meteorologist on WTHR-TV in Indianapolis. "My dad was a quiet farm kid. Your uncle was very well educated, glib, funny. They were yin and yang."

Both Bernie and Charlie were draftees. They would have gotten to know each other in the 45th Infantry Division, 157th Infantry Regiment, likely in North Africa or Sicily.

Both won Bronze Stars in France. "They were both instructed to take a hill," Timothy said. "My grandfather had to run telephone wire to the area up the hill, so the men higher up could speak to the leadership at the bottom." This would have been crucial — not all units, in those days, had wireless communication. "I know that's one thing they did that was very heroic."

Charlie Lofton

There were other acts of bravery. Ultimately, Charlie won a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct Medal, and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal.

But war isn't all daring and danger. A lot of it is just the mundane business of mustering, marching, foraging for food, setting up and striking camp. It was here that Charlie and Bernie got to know each other. Like each other. And profit from each other's skill set.

Survival skills

"My father knew how to survive," Chuck Lofton said. "If the family wanted something to eat, they would go in the woods and shoot it. Whether it was a squirrel or a rabbit or a wild turkey."

Which is how Bernie and Charlie bonded over potatoes.

"They'd decided to go foraging," Tim said. "They found some wild potatoes sprouting in the forest. Your uncle was like, 'What are we going to do with this? We can't take it back to camp.' And Charlie said, 'You got a tin can or something? We're gonna make hash browns — and we're gonna do it right here.' And they found a little bit of oil, and they used their knives to cut ridges on the top of a tin can, to make a kind of a grater. And they made hash browns."

Tit for tat, there was the time that Charlie was in line to be a supply clerk. It was a highly desirable position, likely to keep a soldier away from enemy fire. Only problem was, Charlie couldn't read a relief map — important in determining where to set up camp.

"He went to your uncle, and your uncle was willing to teach him how to read a relief map, how to figure out where there's an elevation," Timothy said. "My grandfather wasn't an educated guy, but he wanted to learn as much as he could, and your uncle was willing to be patient and teach him."

They made a deal. Bernie would help Charlie. And when the opportunity came, Charlie would get Bernie into supplies, too. Eventually, the chance came, and Bernie took it. That little pact may have been the reason Bernie survived.

"If indeed Charlie got my father into the supply business and off of the front, than Charlie saved his life," said my cousin Michael.

Then there was Anzio. It was one of the pivotal battles in the Italian campaign — Jan. 22 to June 5, 1944. And it was extremely hard on the 45th, already known as a hard-luck division (over 25,000 battle casualties in the course of the war). 

"Anzio was hell," Chuck Lofton said. "It was just a mess. Bullets were flying and bodies were everywhere."

Recently, Chuck discovered some of his late father's handwritten notes about those momentous days.

"We were on Anzio beachhead in Italy, waiting for our next orders," Charlie had scrawled. "We had dug in along the road behind the hedgerow, near the beach. We had dug in at midnight, and they began firing."

4,400 people died at Anzio. It later became the basis for this "Military Action Playset"

And that was where Bernie saved Charlie's life.

It was on April 12, 1944. "They got off the beach to a road, where Dad says they dug a trench, a foxhole in the road," Chuck said. "That's when dad was shot. He jumped into the foxhole, then a shell hit, and they were covered with dirt."

Essentially, the two were buried alive for days. Charlie was unconscious. His back was full of shrapnel. The specifics of what Bernie did, to keep Charlie alive until they could be rescued, are not known to either of our families. But until the end of his days, Charlie referred to Beckerman as the guy who saved his life.

"I know he credited your uncle with getting him out of there," Timothy said. "I remember when he had a series of heart attacks when I was in high school. I'm sitting there with him at the hospital bed. And he's like, 'I'm not scared of anything anymore. Anything I got now is borrowed time. I was supposed to die in that foxhole with Beckerman.' "

Bernie Beckerman, at the beerhall where he and Charlie were stationed at Munich

Never forget

Toward the close of the war, the two wound up in Munich. Pitched camp in a beer hall. On April 29, 1945, the 45th was one of three divisions ordered to liberate the concentration camp at Dachau.

The world, at this point, knew little of the Nazi atrocities. Rumors, yes. But the full horror of the Holocaust was not known — not even to Bernie and Charlie, ordered to guard the perimeter. They were to stay outside the outer wall, and under no circumstances go in. Orders.

"You uncle starts telling my grandfather, 'Hey, Charlie, you have any film?' " Timothy said. "They both I guess had these little Brownie cameras. And Charlie said, "OK, I got film, but I gotta save it. I wanna take some pictures. We might be going to the Alps later.' They used to swap things all the time. So Bernie said something like, 'I know where I can get a guitar. If I can get that guitar, I'll swap you for the film you have right now.' "

Bernie loaded his camera with the film, told Charlie to keep an eye out for him, and then — stealthily — jumped the fence.

"He was putting himself in a great deal of danger by doing that, as Charlie used to point out," Timothy said. "He was going against orders. But whatever was going on inside was so important to him that he absolutely had to document it."

Some time later, Bernie returned. As Charlie was to tell it many times: "So Beckerman comes back, and he's a different man. Whatever he saw just absolutely changed him."

Those photos, taken with Charlie's film and Bernie's camera, still exist. Prisoners, emaciated, behind a barbed-wire fence. Bodies, piled up and rotting, in open railway cars.

Prisoners behind barbed wire at Dachau

"Pa" — Timothy always called his grandfather Pa —  "would always say, 'He had to be the very first person who ever took pictures of that.' " Later, others of the 45th were let inside, officially. Charlie never forgot what he saw. "It would always come back to the ovens," Timothy said. "The terror of seeing those ovens. And the human remains that had been left behind."

From such experiences, the contours of the Lofton family tree were radically altered, Timothy believes.

In the most fundamental way, obviously: If Charlie had died at Anzio, there would have been no Chuck, no Timothy. "I wouldn't be talking to you now," Tim said.

For that matter, if Charlie hadn't gotten Bernie transferred, my dad — Edwin Beckerman — might have lost his brother. His wife, Gloria, would have lost her husband. And I would never have had cousins: Michael and Jonathan, Bernie's sons.

"The story of war is not just the big story of what people are fighting for," said Bernie's older son, Jonathan Beckerman, who went into social work. "It's also about the friendship of two people, and how they relate to each other."

In more subtle ways, the friendship of these two men changed each other's lives. Because of his association with my uncle, Charlie brought up his family to value education. When they moved to Chicago after the war, they settled in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.

Timothy and Chuck Lofton

"It definitely changed who we were," Timothy said. "I could see myself, if that all hadn't happened, kind of growing up as a crazy, conservative redneck. But that's not who my family was. You go through something like that, things like civil rights and social issues become incredibly important to you. And you pass that on to your kids, and you pass that on to your grandkids."

The big question remains: If this relationship was so important, so life-changing, why didn't these two keep in touch after the war?

Any number of reasons, perhaps, including the fact that the pre-internet world was a lot less connected. Finding people was harder then. "I bet that happened a lot," my cousin Michael said. "People who were extremely close in the war, who never looked each other up."

It may be that both simply wanted to put the war behind them. The good, as well as the bad. All of it.

But there might be an additional reason, Timothy proposed. One that my cousin Michael finds flatly incredible. But here it is.

Charlie, his grandson says, may have never known Bernie's first name.

Or if he did, he later forgot it — in the many tellings and retellings of the stories about the man who saved his life. His friend, Beckerman.

"He just called him Beckerman," Timothy said. "I don't think he ever knew his first name." 


Email: Twitter: @jimbeckerman1