Salina Utah Massacre – Murdered German Soldiers in Small Town Utah

When used in the historic context of the American West, the word "massacre" usually involves Anglo-Native conflicts--either a mass killing of whites by natives (Gunnison Massacre of 1853, where Captain John Gunnison and a surveying party were killed by Utes near Delta) or of natives by anglos (Bear River Massacre of 1863 where some 200 U.S. soldiers killed an encampment of perhaps as many as 450 Shoshone men, women and children in Cache Valley).

The Salina Utah Massacre, also called the Utah Prisoner of War Massacre occurred at midnight on July 8, 1945, at a POW camp housing German prisoners, in Salina, Utah. Nine German prisoners were killed, 19 were wounded by American soldier Clarence Bertucci, who opened fire from a guard tower with a machine gun through military tents with the sleeping German prisoners inside.

Bertucci had expressed a hatred for Germans, and threatened to kill them, but in a state of war, the threats were generalized and taken for granted.  Six prisoners died at the scene, two died from injuries in a local hospital, and one died several days later, at an army hospital in Brigham City. Camp Salina housed about 250 German POWs, and was used for agricultural labor.

On the night of the massacre, Bertucci, a 23-year-old private with a sketchy military past, after an evening of heavy drinking, reported for duty, loaded the machine gun in a guard tower, and fired on the POW tents, quickly running through a belt of 250 cartridges.  He was in the process of reloading a new ammo belt when he was subdued by other U.S. soldiers.

On July 8, 2014, the 69th anniversary of the tragedy, I spoke with Mike Rose, author of the book, Salina Utah Massacre, who in addition to writing the definitive record on the incident, also headed the effort to create the memorial.  (Listen to the interview below.)