ELLENSBURG, Wash. -- The death train still haunts him.

It had arrived two or three days before he did, during the final week of World War II. The line of boxcars, many of them open to the weather and pockmarked with bullet holes, was full of corpses.

"They died on the way," says Dee Eberhart, who later learned the prisoners had traveled nearly three weeks with little or no food or water while suffering extreme temperatures and strafing attacks by Allied pilots unaware of what was aboard.

Emaciated bodies also lay on the ground near the tracks just outside the compound.

"You couldn't help but see it, smell it," Eberhart says. "Who can describe it?"

Sixty-four years after the gruesome discovery of April 29, 1945, the Dachau death train still comes to him at night.

"I have nightmares," he says.

The soldier's perspective is just one of three components in talks he gives about the Holocaust -- the systematic killing of 6 million Jews and millions of others from 1933 to 1945. He also talks about the Nazis and their victims.

"I'm no expert, but I was there," says Eberhart.

This weekend, on the Fourth of July, a celebration of freedom and adoption of the 1776 Declaration of Independence -- and just one month after a fatal shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. -- he believes his message of freedom, vigilance and remembrance remains especially relevant.

A speaker for the state Holocaust Education Center, he travels around the region -- and as far as Germany and the Netherlands -- to talk about the day he helped liberate Germany's longest-running concentration camp.

"It's really important what he's doing, talking (about his experiences) and refuting the deniers," says his wife, Barbara, 81. She sometimes accompanies her husband when he speaks to students and other groups.

"And the kids, the young kids, they get it," she says. "They understand the point he's trying to get across. It's standing up for a person who's being discriminated against, recognizing when this happens and knowing that it's wrong."

Three years ago this month, a man with ties to the Tri-Cities shot six women, killing one of them, at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Last month, an 88-year-old white supremacist opened fire at the national Holocaust museum, killing a security guard.

"Those are tragedies in their own right," Eberhart says. "The price of vigilance takes a toll. It's being paid by the innocent.

"I think it behooves all of us to try to be aware not only of our heritage but of what's going on, and be intolerant of people who are intolerant."

On Thursday, a special ceremony was held at the Army's Yakima Training Center near Selah to award Eberhart a long list of medals recognizing his World War II service, including the Bronze Star. U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, made the presentation.

Not all soldiers got their medals when they were discharged after the war. Eberhart says he doesn't know who told the military that he hadn't received all the medals that were attributed to him.

"I was invited, and I am pleased to accept," says Eberhart, who turns 85 on July 10 and has lived near Ellensburg since 1965 with his wife of 56 years.

Barbara and some of his seven children and 11 grandchildren accompanied him to Thursday's ceremony.

A 1943 graduate of Toppenish High School, he served as a first scout in I Company of the 242nd Infantry Regiment of the famed 42nd Rainbow Division, landing in Marseilles in December 1944 and fighting his way through France and Germany along the Maginot and Siegfried lines.

"I always went first," he says. "It was the loneliest job in the world."

Some of the units he served with suffered casualties of 80 percent or more. And while there were many close calls, he was never wounded.

"Everybody else was picked off around me," he says. "You wonder about survival. I just chalk it up to luck. That's all it is: bad luck or good luck."

Toting a 9-pound M1 Garand rifle, Eberhart conducted patrols behind enemy lines, dug foxholes, and dodged shrapnel, explosions and artillery fire.

Four months later, approaching the Dachau concentration camp, he saw a smokestack across a field.

"I thought it was a factory. We got closer, and then you could see something was going on. We could see the wire."

Electrified barbed wire and a moat girded the compound, which was also fortified with guard towers.

"The prisoners were milling around inside the compound," says Eberhart, who was 20 at the time. "It was mass confusion. I was outside the wire, but I could see the condition they were in, arms like skeletons."

He also saw the line of boxcars that are now referred to as the "Dachau Death Train" and heard stories from troops who had been inside the camp.

"The fires (in the crematoria) had burned out," he says. "But the bodies were still stacked up."

As for his fellow soldiers: "I would say there was fury and rage."

About 32,000 prisoners were freed that April afternoon. But it's not known exactly how many people died at Dachau. More than 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed there. And more than 31,000 deaths were registered since the camp opened in 1933. However, many weren't recorded.

Eberhart, a professor emeritus of geography at Central Washington University, has returned to Dachau several times. He's been active with the Rainbow Divisions Veterans Association and its affiliated Memorial Foundation for more than 30 years. His wife is active in the Ladies Auxiliary.

In May 1992, they attended the dedication of a plaque recognizing the Rainbow Division at Dachau. In fact, Eberhart was instrumental in getting it installed and helped with its wording, which he read at the event. The memorial still hangs in the main entry of the camp, which now serves as a memorial of the Holocaust.

Most of the camp "had been so sanitized it was almost unrecognizable to me," Eberhart says. "It was really emotional to be there."

On Saturday, he will post an American flag at his home. He says he always flies it on the Fourth of July.

"There are three epoch-changing events in American history," he says, listing the Revolutionary War, Civil War and World War II. While the Americans -- or Allies -- were victorious, he says, freedom continues to be threatened.

"Evil is still out there," he says. "It hasn't ended yet."

But, "There is hope as long as there is education."

Medals award to Dee Eberhart

* Bronze Star

* Combat Infantryman Badge First Award

* European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal

* Good Conduct Medal

* American Campaign Medal

* World War II Victory Medal

* Honorable Service Lapel Button

* Expert Badge with carbine and rifle bars