Iconic Author Was Inspired by Lifelong Friend from Hellertown

Your grandfather or father may have shared his World War II stories within your close circle of family and friends. In the case of the late Hellertown resident, Bernard V. O'Hare, the whole world knows his war stories. He was a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during the famous allied bombing of the city. Between Feb. 13 and Feb. 15, 1945, the once-beautiful city was bombed with more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices. The intense bombing caused a firestorm that killed 23,000 people and destroyed 15 square miles of the center of the city.

Twenty-two year-old Bernard V. O'Hare Jr. was an infantry scout in the 106th Infantry Division at the time of this historic event. The Army had instituted a buddy system whereby soldiers were paired off to look after one another, and O'Hare's buddy became 22-year-old Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. First, the two men survived the front line at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium in December of 1944. Vonnegut and O'Hare found themselves trapped behind German lines for five days before being captured. The Germans then sent them with thousands of other prisoners by boxcars to a POW camp in Bad Orb. A few days later, O'Hare and Vonnegut and 100 other POWs were transferred to a work camp in Dresden. Nicknamed the "Jewel Box" and "Florence of the Elbe" because of its stunning wealth of baroque and rococo architecture, the city was the capital of the Saxony state and had been a royal residence since the Middle Ages. The boys did not partake of the elegance and culture of the beautiful city, however. Instead, they were cruelly treated and starved by their captors.

In Dresden, O'Hare and Vonnegut lived and worked in a former meatpacking plant called ‘Schlachthof Fuenf’ or ‘Slaughterhouse Five.’ Over the two days of the Allied bombing in February 1945, as the POWS were packing medical supplies three stories underground the city was decimated above. The prisoners were later ordered by the German Army to remove the dead bodies from the rubble. It was a horrible, impossible task made worse by the angry, surviving civilians who threw rocks, spit and cursed at them. Periodically, as the men did this grisly work, an Allied airplane would appear overhead and spray the area with a machine gun. As the war was coming to an end two months later, the guards abandoned their prisoners. O'Hare, Vonnegut and four others found a cart and horse. They painted a white American star on the side of the cart and were captured by the Russians. Soon they were traded for Russian prisoners and given over to American custody. O'Hare and Vonnegut made the long trip back home together. They both received the Purple Heart.

Vonnegut would become famous with the publication of his first novel Cat's Cradle (1963). Because of his hellish memories of the war, he struggled in writing his next novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) about the bombing of Dresden. He frequently called and visited his army buddy, O'Hare, at his Easton Road home, where they would review his material. Bernard O'Hare was living in Hellertown with his wife Mary and children (a local political blogger and reporter), Michael, Mary, Ellen and Theresa. Mary had listened to the men's war stories for years, and she pleaded with Vonnegut not to write the typical Hollywood-style novel that glorified war. Mary reminded Vonnegut that he and her husband were barely adults when they enlisted. It is likely that Mary's vocation as a nurse influenced her view of war, and her comments changed Vonnegut's direction with his book. He realized that his story should convey the confusion and innocence of the typical young soldier. He would ultimately dedicate the book to her.

In 1967, Vonnegut received a Guggenheim grant to go to Germany to do research for his book. He asked O'Hare to travel with him to assist in visiting the sites of their shared war experiences. Vonnegut and O'Hare had some difficulty entering East Germany, but were able to talk their way in. The two found Dresden, then behind the Iron Curtain and under Soviet influence, to be a depressed and desolate city. They tried calling their prison guards by looking up their names in a telephone book at their hotel, but no one would agree to speak to them. When Vonnegut completed his manuscript of Slaughterhouse-Five he sent it to Bernard and Mary O'Hare for their opinion. They loved it, and it was published to critical acclaim soon after. Vonnegut would go on to place a Bernard-like character in several of his books.

In 1990, Bernard died at age 67 of lung cancer and tuberculosis. Vonnegut attended his funeral in Bethlehem. Bernard served as assistant District Attorney and District Attorney of Northampton County. He was a partner in the O'Hare and Heitczman law firm in Bethlehem.

In 2004, Vonnegut spoke to the Lehigh University graduating class and fondly recalled his lifetime friend, Bernie O'Hare, and his visits with the O'Hare family in Hellertown. Vonnegut himself passed away on April 11, 2007, in New York, at the age of 84.

Slaughterhouse-Five remains his most well-known work and continues to be widely read and studied. In 1998, it was ranked Number 18 on a list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library.