Even 63 years after the liberation, Hoyt suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and attended a weekly group therapy session at a Veterans Affairs facility.
"Seeing these things, it changes you. I was a kid," he said. "Des Moines had been the furthest I'd ever been from home. I still have horrific dreams. Usually someone needs help and I can't help them. I'm in a situation where I'm trapped and I can't get out."
'There were thousands of bodies piled high'
James Hoyt delivered mail in rural Iowa for more than 30 years. Yet Hoyt had long kept a heroic secret: He was one of the four U.S. soldiers to first see Buchenwald concentration camp. Hoyt died this week at 83. "I saw hearts that had been taken from live people," he once said. The nation's top Army official called him a hero "we can never forget."
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See horrors Hoyt found at Buchenwald
