You don’t remember the day you were born or the day you die. But you do remember the day or days when your innocence is shattered.

April 4, 1945.

It was a sunny morning in Ohrdruf, Germany, and my battalion, the 89th Infantry Division, was on patrol. We had heard rumors of Nazi concentration camps, but at that point none had been found.

—And then they were, by us.

The profundity of the moment was completely lost on me, in part because we had no prior idea the extent of the atrocities being inflicted, and in part because the mind simply can’t process all of the horror that was revealed as we made our way through the camp.

From the outside Ohrdruf was unimpressive, just barbed wire fences, a wooden sign engraved with German words, and a bunch of small barrack-like buildings surrounded by forest. But inside it was something wholly other: bodies—recently killed, bloodied and wet, half-naked, and emaciated—piled haphazardly in the main assembly area; the hand of an older man with a gaping head wound fighting its way through the mound to be seen; railroad ties like a makeshift pyre strewn with hastily half-burnt and grisly decomposing victims; inmates, more like specters than men, confused or delirious, dressed in rags, hiding in their bunks, trying to wait out the earlier massacre or else wandering soullessly around the grounds, staring at us like they weren’t sure we were real.

The worst of it though was when I happened upon the shed—the “beating shed,” as it was known. At one time inmates were bent over a table with their hands spread; 115 lashes with a sharp-bladed shovel for the smallest infraction. But in the Nazi’s haste to “hide the evidence” as the allies got closer, they turned it into a grave above ground: more bodies, this time entirely naked and twisted unnaturally, stacked 10-feet high to the ceiling, dusted with lime in order to hide the stench.

—Nothing could hide the stench. Rotting flesh, burnt feces, stale urine, and dirty laundry all conspired to burn my nostrils like an inferno. Everyone who saw the shed couldn’t stop from vomiting—including General Patton a week later when he visited Ohrdruf with President Eisenhower and other Generals.

None of us who “liberated” the first concentration camp could believe what we were seeing; the imagination can’t contort to such degrees. I was just a 20-year-old boy from Pennsylvania, who had been wide-eyed about life, looking for adventure, caught up in the swell of patriotism of the war raging in Europe and Japan. I had spent a year dodging bullets and bombs, detonating mines, and setting up booby traps, roadblocks, and pill boxes. I’d lost my best friend on the first day of combat and hundreds more in one night while crossing the Rhine in the historic “Operation Varsity.” I’d hidden in cellars along the Moselle Riverbank, and listened to church bells toll as our battalion climbed into small, unreliable boats, paddling for our lives as the sky lit up with fire. I saw everything that war does to people—the fear, the rage, the guilt, the barbarism. By the grace of God, I made it through, for the most part physically unscathed. But what I encountered that first day at Ohrdruf, I still, at 94 years old, can’t wrap my head around; it caused an invisible wound unlike anything I’ve known, one that I struggle to put words to even now.

The memories of Ohrdruf have never gone away. The nightmares have lessened and faded, but the existential nausea that I felt that first day has returned over and over, sparked by sights, sounds, smells, and events. These memories have been, and will always be, with me—like the spiked brass-knuckles I found in the beating shed.

When faced with the impossible or the unthinkable, you have two choices: you can lose faith—in yourself, others, life, even God—or else you can turn to faith to find meaning, purpose, value, and connection. There have been times when I’ve felt the former taking over. But I made a vow to myself when I finally returned home from the War: I couldn’t prevent the horrific mass slaughter by the Nazis, but I could advocate for life in all its various forms—which is what I’ve done, alongside my loving wife, for the last seven decades.

—A small honor to the lives that were lost. A great reminder to everyone that life is always worth living.