Ramón Galindo: An American-Latino soldier-magician
Ramón Galindo was born on 29 May 1921, in San Juan, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. His parents moved across the border to the U.S.A. when he was still a baby. They opened a tortilla shop in Austin, Texas and Galindo was raised there.
He was just 8 years old when share prices at the New York Stock Exchange collapsed in 1929.
Despite growing up during the decade-long Great Depression, Galindo developed an early interest in magic after his father showed him a trick.
Off to war
When the United States entered World War Two in December 1941, the 20-year-old volunteered for military service in the Texas State Guard. He completed basic soldier training at Camp Mabry, in mid-Texas, under instructors who’d fought in World War One.
A year after entering the State Guard, Galindo tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps. But military recruiters turned him away because he wasn’t an American citizen, even though he’d taken private flying lessons.
While he couldn’t join the Air Corps, Galindo could join the 571st Anti-Aircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion six months later. He received his anti-aircraft training at Camp Wallace in Galveston, Texas.
Soon after, aged 22, Galindo was sworn in as an American citizen in 1943 in Boston, Massachusetts, while stationed at Camp Edwards nearby.
Over to Europe
On 6 June 1944, D-Day, the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy and their slow advance to Germany began. Five months later, in November 1944, the U.S. Army deployed Galindo to Europe. He travelled by ship, with 11,000 other soldiers. They docked in Scotland and from there went by train to be based in England for two months. By this stage, the army employed him as an M3 half-track armoured personnel carrier driver and a radio operator, still in the 571st Battalion.
“From there [England], we went over the Channel and went… into France, Belgium, Holland, until we got up to… Ardennes.”
Battle of the Bulge
The 571st arrived at Ardennes just as the Battle of the Bulge started. Also known as the Ardennes Offensive, the battle was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War Two. It lasted for five weeks, from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945. The Germans achieved surprise with an offensive launched through the forest region between Belgium and Luxembourg.
It was winter. The ground was covered in snow, and the temperature freezing cold. After arriving and digging defensive positions, Galindo and his anti-aircraft colleagues got their first contact with their enemy.
“As we were looking up towards the sky, we could hear some planes up there,… it was a P-51 [American fighter] behind a Stuka [German dive-bomber]… The Stuka was in front. It was trying to get away from the P-51… We said OK, we’ll help him out… As soon as we saw the shadow of a plane coming down in the clouds, we were all lined up, and we started firing. We hit.”
Unfortunately, the aircraft the soldiers shot down in their first contact with the enemy was the P-51. “And that was the worst feeling we had.” Luckily, the American pilot parachuted out and survived.
“But after that, we did hit some German planes. Our job was to get ahead of all the troops... to provide air support for… the infantry or the artillery.”
From the Ardennes Forrest, the 571st Battalion advanced up to the Rhine river.
Battle of the Rhine
Running north-south just inside Germany’s western border, the Rhine was the last major barrier to the Allies’ advance from the West and was both a physical and psychological line. To the Allies it had to be crossed, and to the Germans it had to be held. For both sides, it would mark the endgame on the Western Front.
It was not a single battle but a series of separate advances in March 1945, forming a major assault in terms of manpower and equipment. Amphibious tracked landing craft, Bailey bridges, and paratrooper landings were used, and thousands of troops were involved.
When Galindo’s unit got up to the Rhine, they couldn’t cross immediately, as the bridges in their areas had been destroyed by the Germans. While they waited for other U.S. 3rd Army troops to secure new crossings, they came across a prisoner-of-war camp. The camp held mostly Russian POWs, but their German guards had abandoned the camp as the Allies approached.
In this unlikeliest of places and times, Galindo found a brother magician in the POW camp.
“I walked into these barracks and some fellows there were playing cards, and I said, ‘anybody speak English?’, ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’ They shook their head, ‘No’. ‘Espanol?’ One guy says’ yo hablo espanol’ (‘I speak Spanish’). And I said well good… so, we could communicate… I told him in Spanish, give me the playing cards. Let me do you a trick… and I did a couple of card tricks.”
“And suddenly somebody tapped me on the back…, it was… a major in the Russian Army… He asked me for the cards… So, I gave him the cards, and he did a couple of tricks. [Magic] was evidently that was his hobby, and that was my hobby.”
After almost a week waiting south of the Rhine, the amphibious and airborne operation to cross it was about to take place. The night before, with all the troops assembled, commanding officers opened sealed envelopes at a set time. One contained a letter from President Roosevelt, thanking the troops for their service and acknowledging that they were going to take part in a heavy battle. The battle was crucial to winning the war, but Roosevelt warned that many of the men might not survive. A second letter from Prime Minister Winston Churchill carried a similar message.
Galindo recalled what happened next:
“As soon as midnight struck, all the American artillery that was gathered there was firing across the Rhine River... I mean just cannons, boom, boom, boom, boom, and infantry soldiers… all scattered out. But as our artillery went across the Rhine, two minutes later [the Germans] had us zeroed in, and it [the German artillery] was hitting on our side.”
“Shots were coming from everywhere. It was every man for himself. That was the only way you could survive.”
“That night,… [was] the worst night I had ever seen. It looked like the end of the world.”
On the banks of the Rhine, on that freezing winter night, Galindo lost many friends as the German forces desperately tried to stop the Allies from crossing the river.
The operation was a success for the Allies. By 24 March, four U.S. divisions had crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim, and U.S. 3rd Army troops soon also successfully assaulted the Rhine at Boppard, St. Goar, and south of the city of Mainz. Other Allied forces established crossing elsewhere on the river.
Czechoslovakia and the end of the war
After the Allies crossed the Rhine River, they began their final assault on Germany. The German defeat was now guaranteed as the Allies pressed them from all directions. By 30 April 1945, Soviet troops had encircled Berlin and were within a few hundred metres of the Reich Chancellery where Adolf Hitler was based. Facing capture, the Nazi leader shot himself dead. Berlin surrendered on 2 May and in the early morning of 7 May, the German Third Reich surrendered unconditionally.
The last major military operation of the war in Europe was the Prague Offensive, which took place from 6 May to 11 May (continuing for a few days after Nazi Germany’s capitulation). U.S. forces weren’t planned to enter Czechoslovakia, which was assigned to the Red Army to liberate.
But, with fighting still ongoing there while the Battle of Berlin played out, General Patton’s 3rd Army set off to help the Soviets and the Czech people rising up against the Nazis. Patton’s force had been moving east through Bavaria in south-eastern Germany and was only 50 miles from the German-Czech border.
16th Armoured Division, with which the 571st Anti-Aircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion was attached, swarmed into the Czech city of Pilsen (famed for its beer) on 6 May, liberating it from the Germans.
And that is how Ramón Galindo found himself in western Czechoslovakia when the war in Europe officially ended on 8 May 1945.
The battalion’s other duties were to support American forces who’d liberated Dachau Concentration Camp, ten miles north-west of Munich. Dachau was the Nazi’s first concentration camp and its longest running one. It comprised a main camp and nearly 100 sub-camps throughout southern Germany and Austria. There were 32,000 documented deaths at the camp, and thousands that are undocumented. At the time of liberation, the camp still housed 30,000 Jewish and other untermensch (Nazi-term: sub-humans) prisoners.
Galindo and his pals travelled to Dachau daily from Munich. Once there, they collected work parties of German and Hungarian prisoners-of-war (who the Americans put into Dachau as they freed the existing prisoners). They took the work parties into the city to “work ‘em out, clean up the rubble and the buildings and all that mess in Munich”. At the end of each day, the U.S. troops returned the POWs to Dachau.
Post-war: Galindo the tailor
Eventually, Galindo and his unit were sent back to the United States, as part of Operation Magic Carpet. This was the operation to repatriate over 8 million American military personnel from the European, Pacific and Asian theatres back home.
For his service, Galindo was awarded the World War Two Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and a Good Conduct Medal.
On 1 February 1946, nine months after Victory in Europe (V.E.) Day, Galindo was honourably discharged from the military.
He returned to Austin and nine months later married his wife, Paulino Santos. The couple later had two daughters.
Back home after the war ended, Galindo started working as a tailor. For seventeen years, he was the lead tailor at Merritt Schaefer & Brown, and he later opened later Ace Custom Tailors in downtown Austin. He sewed for many well-known people, including Senator (later Vice President and President) Lyndon B. Johnson.
Galindo the magician
Galindo ran the business for three decades. On the side, he worked as a semi-professional magician. Magic was his true passion. “He breathed magic,” said his daughter, Josie Galindo Caballero. “It was everything to him.”
After the war, he met fellow magician and mentalist Herman Yerger, who became Galindo’s mentor for a while. As he became more proficient, Galindo specialised in coin and playing card manipulation and tricks involving the bare hand production of parakeets and doves. In 1954, very few magicians were working with birds, so Galindo’s magic act was novel.
In the 1950s, he won the Al Sharpe Trophy (twice) for ‘Best Originality and Showmanship’ with parakeets and doves. He joined the Austin chapter (Ring 60) of the International Brotherhood of Magicians in 1953, later becoming its president. He was also a member of the Texas Association of Magicians.
Into the 1960s, Galindo began wearing a startling charro costume and smart sombrero, celebrating his Hispanic race.
In 1961, Hurricane Carla slammed into the Texas Gulf Coast, sending evacuees to what was then Austin’s City Coliseum. Galindo’s daughter remembers her father taking her as a young girl to the concert venue as he performed magic for all the children whose lives had been turned upside down.
(Source: Ramón Galindo)
He became known as the ‘Bird Man of Austin’ and was described by his American peers as “the most highly respected and best-known parakeet illusionist in the entire southern region of our country”. Galindo worked his award-winning manipulation and bird act for forty years, typically finishing his performance with the production of a golden pheasant.
“A polished performer; he overlooks no details. One gets but one chance to make that lasting first impression. And there he is in brilliant colour, flashing smile, and a presence that serves notice that he is there to entertain, to dazzle, and to mystify,” said fellow magician Dan Driscoll.
He travelled to conferences throughout the world, performing and lecturing about parakeet magic. He received much recognition, including being the featured magician in the January 1991 edition of leading magicians’ periodical, Genii - The International Conjurors’ Magazine. Assisted on stage by his daughters for many years, Galindo taught and coached other magicians. These included two of his grandchildren who developed their own award-winning parakeet act.
As a tailor, he created and stitched his own costumes, as well as making costumes and adding secret pockets and such like for many other magicians, including Harry Blackstone Snr. (who he met during World War Two), Zaney Blaney, Bev Bergeron, and John Moehring.
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Galindo the film maker
Galindo’s other interest was film making. He bought his first movie camera, an 8mm Kodak Brownie, in the 1960s. As an amateur filmmaker, he consciously prioritised documenting Austin’s changing neighbourhoods, businesses and people in hundreds of hours of footage. His other work included two narrative films, Josephine’s Dream (1962) and A Day of Horror (1964). The latter in an amateur horror film. He re-edited the film for exhibition at a local film festival in 2015, where he won Lifetime Achievement and Best Director awards.
Galindo set up a back room in his tailor shop as a studio to produce and edit films. Besides recording Austin's life, he recorded the comings and goings of the magic community in Texas. Over decades, he filmed many magic conventions, visiting magicians and made instructional videos. In 2009, the Texas Association of Magicians recognised Galindo as its most distinguished member for his efforts to preserve the achievements of the Texas magic community in film.
In later life Galindo donated over 100 films and videotapes to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. Comprising a broad range of topics, the Ramón Galindo Collection shows the creator’s many talents.
Broken wand
Galindo stopped tailoring in 1991, aged 70, but carried on performing magic and making films in retirement.
Ramón Galindo - World War Two veteran, tailor, magician and filmmaker – died on 2 July 2020, aged 99.
Sources for this article include interviews with Ramón Galindo for The University of Texas at Austin’s Libraries Oral History Project (September 2000), the Texas Veterans Land Board Voices of Veterans Oral History Program (November 2009), and the National Museum of the Pacific War (June 2015). Also, Genii - The International Conjurors’ Magazine (January 1991) and the Ramón Galindo Collection at the Texas Archive of the Moving Image.
Ramón Galindo wasn’t the only magician-soldier to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of the Rhine. Stay tuned to read more true accounts of magicians at war in the last months of World War Two as the Allies crossed into Germany.
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