Veteran Robert Levine. On July 3, 1944, the 90th Division launched an attack against a strong enemy line. There were heavy casualties, and the group was pushed back with a counterattack. After about a week of fighting, the Germans, who were concealed in the surrounding woods, opened fire and ambushed the soldiers. Levine was able to get into a foxhole except for his leg, which was hit by a nearby grenade. He was captured and taken to a field hospital in a local farmhouse. In the kitchen, which was being used as the operating room, a German doctor grabbed Levine's dog tag and asked what the "H" meant. Aware of the Nazis' persecution of Jews and not wanting to tell the doctor it stood for Hebrew, Levine said nothing, closed his eyes, and hoped for the best.
"I said to myself, there goes my 20th birthday," he remembered. "I really did not believe I would survive, I should have just taken my dog tag and thrown it away when I was captured, but it never dawned on me."
When he woke up, his right leg was amputated, and his dog tag was missing. There was a card in his pocket from the German doctor that Levine translated years later explaining what he had done and why. It read: "I know I told you this, but the leg was such that I had to do this." Levine said he believes the doctor saved his life, recognizing what having an "H" on his dog tag could mean for a POW.
