A Soldier Strips the Romance Out of Life at War - Page 11

JCFalkenbergIII · #**251** (**permalink**) January 30th, 2009, 08:52 PM

Im glad to see another book out that portrays what the individual soldiers experienced and went through during the war.

JCFalkenbergIII · #**252** (**permalink**) January 31st, 2009, 03:03 AM

"smelling the decaying human and horse flesh after the massacre of the Falaise Gap, with what seemed like mile after mile of dead bodies and abandoned equipment, and being surprised that the Wehrmacht still had<BR>to rely so heavily upon horsedrawn supply wagons and gun limbers; on one occasion we fired HE shells from a concealed position upon a German supply column, scoring direct hits on two ammunition wagons which disintegrated in balls of fire, then driving over to examine the result _ by an odd quirk of human nature we were more saddened by the dead and dying horses than by the mangled human corpses we found there;"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/s...a4485440.shtml

JCFalkenbergIII · #**253** (**permalink**) February 2nd, 2009, 11:32 PM

Here is a quote from a former member in another thread. I think this is a prime example of what some seriously think war is all about. Makes you wonder where they get these views and ideas from.

"if look back and think about ww11,all I see is me shooting ak47s and going up to a guy and slitting there thotes.I would want to fight in ww11 so bad because I would want to go into a tank and shoot there machine guns and there conon and shoot out the hach.I would ambush a sworm of guys with a bar.I would thow a garnade down a tanks hach and use a panzerfouse Thats all I would do in ww11."

JCFalkenbergIII · #**254** (**permalink**) February 3rd, 2009, 01:04 AM

A very interesting read of former Army Capt. James W. Elkins account of the Tarawa battle.

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/liv...102_Elkins.pdf

JCFalkenbergIII · #**255** (**permalink**) February 7th, 2009, 03:35 AM

War's Silence

Even the 'greatest generation' was changed forever in the fight</B>
By Rob Loughran
My father, Patrick Loughran, a gregarious Irishman from County Tyrone, and Chuck Morrison, my taciturn uncle from Albany, N.Y., were united by much more than the fact that they'd married sisters. They were members of Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation"—my father, a SeaBee; my uncle, a Marine. Both veterans of WW II, they had been beaten and battered by the world in precisely the same way. They'd been through the Depression and then the war and had shared in the freedoms and economic booms that followed. They knew the rules. They knew what was expected of them. They knew how to live without doubt or regret.
Or so I thought.
In 1987, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Following the surgery, radiation was necessary to zap any remaining possibility of cancer. Even though Redwood Radiology in Santa Rosa was near my house, my father insisted on driving up from Petaluma to chauffeur me to my appointments. As often as not, my uncle Chuck would accompany us.
It wasn't only a kindness that they provided for me; it was something for them to do. They were both retired from busy and active careers, and there is a limit to how much weeding, watering and gardening a tract-home-sized piece of earth will endure. And so every Thursday for a few months I sat in the car, more worried about my health than the banter, listening to stories about things that mostly occurred before I was born: the virtues of the Studebaker vs. the Buick; the wild times they used to have in Monterey with my uncle Mario; how America had gone to hell in a hand basket.
Then one day, my father asked Chuck why he never talked about the war. Chuck didn't answer. He waved away the question and stared out the window.
My father had pictures of himself in the Aleutians and South Pacific; I'd seen pictures of other uncles in uniform. But I don't recall any pictures or memorabilia of Chuck. He had fought with the Marines in WW II and Korea; I couldn't tell you where or with what battalion, company or unit. He simply never spoke about it.
On this day, as well, Chuck just shook his head and didn't answer the question. It was not unusual for Chuck to be quiet. He was the most quietly sociable man I'd ever known. He never missed a party (after all, they were usually at his house) or a joke. His interjections into conversations were always terse, telling, funny and conclusive.
But I'd never before seen him so discomfited as he was by my father's question, "Why do you never talk about the war?"
My uncle Chuck was a generous and gracious man. A success in business. A loving father. A respected, substantial and beloved cog in a large, extended family. A veteran of probably the last popularly supported and undoubtedly necessary war this country will ever wage. And yet even an interloper from another generation could see that while he had survived that war successfully, he was not unscathed. A portion of his life, years of it, had been ruined to the point that he refused to recall or speak about them.
There are the KIA, the MIA and the wounded, but every war also produces a more restrained casualty. For every reminiscing veteran that Tom Brokaw or Ken Burns interviews, there is another survivor, another hero, another victim whose wartime experience is simply unspeakable. They can't and don't talk about it.
There is a generation at war now who will return to have children, attend college, buy houses and live "good" American lives. We can explore the reasons for Gulf War II and the reasons against it. The costs in political clout and world credibility are important and debatable. But we cannot forget that beyond the obvious expense in dollars and lives, as with every war, there is another toll, a mute and tragic carnage.

The tragedy of silent lives forever changed.

News & Features in The North Bay | Open Mic | War's Silence

JCFalkenbergIII · #**256** (**permalink**) February 8th, 2009, 05:48 AM

"There are the KIA, the MIA and the wounded, but every war also produces a more restrained casualty. For every reminiscing veteran that Tom Brokaw or Ken Burns interviews, there is another survivor, another hero, another victim whose wartime experience is simply unspeakable. They can't and don't talk about it."

So very very true. My father was one of those who wouldn't speak about it until his dying day.

JCFalkenbergIII · #**257** (**permalink**) February 15th, 2009, 08:08 AM

Yucaipa man experienced the atrocities of World War II

WESLEY G. HUGHES, Staff Writer
Posted: 02/10/2009 11:25:42 PM PST

YUCAIPA - He was a medic by training, a medic in combat, a medic as a German POW, a medic in a Nazi slave labor camp and now "I'm back as a medic," said World War II Army veteran Anthony C. Acevedo.
The 84-year-old Yucaipa man smiled as he made that comment Saturday about caring for his invalid wife, 88-year-old Maria.
For a few months in the winter of 1945 in Europe, the intrepid soldier and his comrades in arms went through what can only be described as hell on Earth.
That story will be told in a major production on CNN hosted by Christiane Amanpour. The date for the broadcast has not yet been set. In addition, Acevedo and his fellow survivors have been invited to Washington, D.C., by the Army in an apparent attempt to make amends.
It all began in a famous moment in history called the Battle of the Bulge, in which 19,000 American troops were killed, 47,500 were wounded and 23,000 were captured or missing.
Acevedo, a member of the 70th Infantry Division, 275th Regiment, Company B, which landed at the recently liberated port of Marseille, was on special assignment with a small detachment of 17 to 20 men on a hilltop.
They were in foxholes and surrounded. The commanding officer, a captain, had been gravely wounded, the medic caring for him was killed, and Acevedo took over his care until their capture. The young corporal and his fellow soldiers were taken to Stalag 9B, a prisoner of war camp at Bad Orb, Germany.
While at Bad Orb he was called out for questioning by the SS, an elite group of Nazi soldiers directly under Hitler's command.
"They put needles under my fingernails and (the interrogator) knew everything in my life," Acevedo said. He was even accused of spying against Germany while he lived in Mexico.
A group of 350 GIs made up of Jewish soldiers and so-called "undesirables" was shipped off to a slave labor camp at Berga, and Acevedo was among them. He believes he was included in the 350 because of the accusation of spying.
When he was captured, Acevedo weighed 149 pounds, and when he was freed his weight had dropped to 87 pounds, a loss of 62 pounds in about two months. He was at Berga just 45 days.
The rations were 100 grams of bread, about 3.5 ounces, a week. The bread was filled with sawdust, ground glass, sand and barley "for camouflage as black bread and we got barley soup," Acevedo said.
"It caused diarrhea and all that," he said.
Acevedo had preserved his medic's gear and was allowed to care for the medical needs of his fellow prisoner until and after he ran out of morphine, sulfa and bandages.
He was fortunate that he wasn't sent into the tunnels. The tunnels were being deepened and enlarged as part of a last ditch defense effort by German forces, which in the final effort weren't used anyway. The work was devastating for the tunnelers: the dust, the backbreaking effort, the malnutrition.
Acevedo created a ledger and began to record the deaths of his fellow soldiers. The list grew and grew. The survivors went from the original 350 to 220 then to 160 to a final count of 120 at the end of a 217-mile death march.
The medic told what happened:
Allied forces were closing in. The Russians, the Americans, the British. The guards at Berga didn't relish the idea of surrendering to the Russians. They took their prisoners and began to march in the opposite direction.
The prisoners were already half-dead from the brutal treatment at Berga, and many who couldn't keep up were shot.
On the last day of their captivity, they had stopped at a farm. The guards tried to rouse them in the morning for another day's march but this time the prisoners said, enough, and refused to go on. They expected to be shot for their stand.
The sounds of U.S tanks and artillery could be heard in the distance. The already nervous guards, who had hoped to use their prisoners as shields, decided it was time to go. They disappeared into the countryside.
The former prisoners made contact with U.S. forces and were transported to the port of Le Havre for return to the United States.
Acevedo still gets angry when he thinks about a couple of incidents that happened after they were liberated. "Our own officials said we were never to say anything about our imprisonment or otherwise we would be punished by court-martial."
To add insult to injury, Acevedo growls, "When we got back to the U.S., the Red Cross charged us for cigarettes and coffee."
He was sent to a recuperation center in Santa Barbara. "We couldn't eat much; our stomachs would blow up," he said.
They were back under Army control. They told us, "Don't do this and don't do that, and we went ahead and did this and did that.
"We didn't know what PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome) was" but now he knows what caused some of his behavior.
He was discharged on Dec. 10, 1945, and made his way to Pasadena. Not long after his discharge, he visited his father, an engineer and industrial designer in Mexico. He still feels the pain of that visit. "My father asked me why I surrendered. In other words, he was saying I was a coward. I didn't see him for seven years after that."

Yucaipa man experienced the atrocities of World War II - Redlands Daily Facts

JCFalkenbergIII · #**258** (**permalink**) March 2nd, 2009, 12:59 AM

More from Anthony C. Acevedo

"The story of the Berga soldiers is now well-documented. In 2003, PBS aired a documentary that featured Acevedo.
Even now, 64 years after his release, recounting his nearly four months as a prisoner brings occasional tears to Acevedo's eyes.
Besides his diary, he has files of old photographs relating to his war experience. Among the service memorabilia laid out on a coffee table in his living room is an American Foreign Legion cap and a Red Cross armband -- the same armband he wore as a medic. It is signed by many of his fellow soldiers. None of the men who signed the armband is alive.
Acevedo's voice is calm and steady as he talks of being beaten and tortured. He recalls the Jews he saw systematically shot in the head. And there were his fellow soldiers, some of whom died in his arms.
Acevedo also drew sketches in his diary. One shows Nazi soldiers striking the working prisoners with batons and bayonets. He says he remembers one prisoner too weakened by malnutrition to stay on his feet. A guard threw a bucket of ice water on him. The sudden shock killed him.
Acevedo's captivity began on Jan. 3, when he and his company surrendered to the Germans. They had been fighting for six days on a mountaintop near Philippsburg, France.
"We fought until the last bullet," he says. "Our captain was very badly wounded."
They were taken to a prisoner-of-war camp at Bad Orb, a German peacetime resort. "

WWII veteran from Yucaipa who survived German camp awaits final honors | Inland News | PE.com | Southern California News | News for Inland Southern California

JCFalkenbergIII · #**259** (**permalink**) March 5th, 2009, 02:07 AM

A Firsthand Account from a World War II Veteran

By: MediaVillage (View Profile)
At the start of the seventh and final installment of Ken Burns’ landmark documentary The War, Seaman First Class Maurice Bell, of Mobile, Alabama, describes in deep detail what it was like to be on the U.S.S. Indianapolis when it was struck by a Kamikaze, March 31, 1945, in the Pacific theater. Nine sailors died on the Indianapolis that day and twenty-nine others were wounded. The Indianapolis was sent to Mare Island off San Francisco for repairs.
Bell’s story, and the breathtaking footage of the Kamikaze strike that accompanies it, is just one of dozens of extraordinary events chronicled in Burns’ seven-part film. For many viewers, it will be the first time they hear a first-person account of the horror of a Kamikaze attack, but it was chillingly familiar to me. My next-door neighbor of the last ten years, Bill Wright, is another World War II veteran who survived a devastating suicide attack. He was serving his country on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Belleau Wood CVL-24 at the time.
Bill’s war story is one of thousands that are not included in Burns’ masterpiece. Of course, every person who served in World War II (and every person who waited for a beloved family member or friend at home) has many stories to tell about his or her experiences during that turbulent time. Many of those stories have already been lost, but as Burns’ film makes clear, it is critically important that as many as possible be documented and remembered by generations to come. (Certainly this is true of all war stories, including those of military personnel currently serving in Iraq.) We cannot do enough to preserve and honor as many of those stories as possible.
The War is largely structured around the personal stories of four WWII veterans (including Maurice Bell) and that’s what makes it stand out from the hundreds of documentaries about the same subject matter that have come before. Most stories about the Second World War are told from a broad point of view—detailed stories about individual valor are almost never heard. That’s due in part to the fact that so few veterans of the war ever speak about the things they saw or did while fighting for freedom. As the harrowing details of so many of the stories told in The War makes clear, wartime violence is more than anyone should ever have to endure or carry in their memory. For these and other reasons, most veterans of World War II chose never to speak about their experiences once they returned home.
Bill Wright, who is now eighty-two years old, has spoken very freely about his experience on the Belleau Wood during the decade I have known him, but he recently told me that he only started opening up about it when he was in his sixties. He didn’t talk about the attack on his ship for more than forty years. When I asked him why, his response was a simple, “I just didn’t.”
On October 13, 1944, Bill, a Seaman First Class and Aviation Metal Smith Striker, was on board the Belleau Wood when a Japanese fighter plane slammed into the deck of the U.S.S. Franklin, which was sailing alongside the Belleau Wood en route to Okinawa. The crew of the Belleau Wood swiftly launched six fighters of its own when another Japanese plane appeared. Seconds later it slammed into the after end of the Belleau Wood. There were 245 casualties by the time the inferno was extinguished, many of them severely burned. Ninety-seven men died.
Bill and one of his fellow seamen were at their stations in a small room below deck that housed controls for the ship’s sprinkler system, which happened to be very near the point of impact. Their petty officer had been killed when the plane hit. As the room began filling with smoke, the door opened and two officers appeared with a wounded seventeen-year-old seaman. Amid the chaos and the carnage, Bill was ordered to tend to the injured young man. He was eighteen-years-old at the time and had no medical training.
At first, Bill couldn’t tell where the younger man had been injured. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the “kid” (as Bill now refers to him) had an enormous hole in his side.
Here’s a part of the story that I have not been able to shake since I first heard it, many years ago. As the injured young man lay on the floor crying out for his mother, Bill looked into the wound and saw what appeared to be “two hard-boiled eggs” inside his body. He later learned those were the man’s adrenal glands.
After calling the bridge and seeking medical advice, and barely able to see through the smoke around them, Bill and the other seaman in the room administered morphine to their injured shipmate. Then they poured sulfur powder into the wound, packed it with “about thirty small cotton pads” and taped it over, while also following orders to operate the ship’s emergency sprinkler system. The injured man survived.
There are other parts of Bill’s story I cannot forget: Gathering the bodies (and body parts) of the deceased, cleaning the blood and viscera from the deck once the fire was out, and the mass burial at sea the following day.
The burial date, October thirty-first, was Bill’s mother’s birthday. While Bill has never remarked about the fact that he narrowly escaped injury or death that day, he recently said to me, “Wouldn’t it have been horrible if my mother leaned that I had been buried on her birthday?” (In fact, Bill was able to return home to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a brief family visit two months later. He arrived at his mother’s doorstep at 9 pm on Christmas Eve.)
Remarkably, the story of Bill’s time in hell has a spectacular happy ending. Following the attack, the Belleau Wood was sent to San Francisco for repairs, and while walking on Market Street on leave one day he met Margaret Ehlert, the woman who would become his wife seven months later. They celebrated their sixty-second anniversary this year.
Bill never returned to sea after the attack on the Belleau Wood. He was transferred to Alameda Naval Air Station outside of Oakland, California, where he served until the end of the war in August 1945. He left the service with nine battle stars, a Presidential citation, a Philippine Liberation Medal with two stars, a Philippine Independence Medal, an American Area medal, a Victory Medal and a Halsey’s Commendation Bar (the latter for saving the life of the injured man on the ship).
When I marveled at all of the awards he had received, Bill smiled and replied, “They never put food on the table.”
Then he quietly added, “War is hell.” Bill spoke those words with such conviction it was as if I had never heard them before.
By Ed Martin

A Firsthand Account from a World War II Veteran - Page 4

JCFalkenbergIII · #**260** (**permalink**) March 5th, 2009, 02:08 AM

A Firsthand Account from a World War II Veteran

By: MediaVillage (View Profile)
At the start of the seventh and final installment of Ken Burns’ landmark documentary The War, Seaman First Class Maurice Bell, of Mobile, Alabama, describes in deep detail what it was like to be on the U.S.S. Indianapolis when it was struck by a Kamikaze, March 31, 1945, in the Pacific theater. Nine sailors died on the Indianapolis that day and twenty-nine others were wounded. The Indianapolis was sent to Mare Island off San Francisco for repairs.
Bell’s story, and the breathtaking footage of the Kamikaze strike that accompanies it, is just one of dozens of extraordinary events chronicled in Burns’ seven-part film. For many viewers, it will be the first time they hear a first-person account of the horror of a Kamikaze attack, but it was chillingly familiar to me. My next-door neighbor of the last ten years, Bill Wright, is another World War II veteran who survived a devastating suicide attack. He was serving his country on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Belleau Wood CVL-24 at the time.
Bill’s war story is one of thousands that are not included in Burns’ masterpiece. Of course, every person who served in World War II (and every person who waited for a beloved family member or friend at home) has many stories to tell about his or her experiences during that turbulent time. Many of those stories have already been lost, but as Burns’ film makes clear, it is critically important that as many as possible be documented and remembered by generations to come. (Certainly this is true of all war stories, including those of military personnel currently serving in Iraq.) We cannot do enough to preserve and honor as many of those stories as possible.
The War is largely structured around the personal stories of four WWII veterans (including Maurice Bell) and that’s what makes it stand out from the hundreds of documentaries about the same subject matter that have come before. Most stories about the Second World War are told from a broad point of view—detailed stories about individual valor are almost never heard. That’s due in part to the fact that so few veterans of the war ever speak about the things they saw or did while fighting for freedom. As the harrowing details of so many of the stories told in The War makes clear, wartime violence is more than anyone should ever have to endure or carry in their memory. For these and other reasons, most veterans of World War II chose never to speak about their experiences once they returned home.
Bill Wright, who is now eighty-two years old, has spoken very freely about his experience on the Belleau Wood during the decade I have known him, but he recently told me that he only started opening up about it when he was in his sixties. He didn’t talk about the attack on his ship for more than forty years. When I asked him why, his response was a simple, “I just didn’t.”
On October 13, 1944, Bill, a Seaman First Class and Aviation Metal Smith Striker, was on board the Belleau Wood when a Japanese fighter plane slammed into the deck of the U.S.S. Franklin, which was sailing alongside the Belleau Wood en route to Okinawa. The crew of the Belleau Wood swiftly launched six fighters of its own when another Japanese plane appeared. Seconds later it slammed into the after end of the Belleau Wood. There were 245 casualties by the time the inferno was extinguished, many of them severely burned. Ninety-seven men died.
Bill and one of his fellow seamen were at their stations in a small room below deck that housed controls for the ship’s sprinkler system, which happened to be very near the point of impact. Their petty officer had been killed when the plane hit. As the room began filling with smoke, the door opened and two officers appeared with a wounded seventeen-year-old seaman. Amid the chaos and the carnage, Bill was ordered to tend to the injured young man. He was eighteen-years-old at the time and had no medical training.
At first, Bill couldn’t tell where the younger man had been injured. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the “kid” (as Bill now refers to him) had an enormous hole in his side.
Here’s a part of the story that I have not been able to shake since I first heard it, many years ago. As the injured young man lay on the floor crying out for his mother, Bill looked into the wound and saw what appeared to be “two hard-boiled eggs” inside his body. He later learned those were the man’s adrenal glands.
After calling the bridge and seeking medical advice, and barely able to see through the smoke around them, Bill and the other seaman in the room administered morphine to their injured shipmate. Then they poured sulfur powder into the wound, packed it with “about thirty small cotton pads” and taped it over, while also following orders to operate the ship’s emergency sprinkler system. The injured man survived.
There are other parts of Bill’s story I cannot forget: Gathering the bodies (and body parts) of the deceased, cleaning the blood and viscera from the deck once the fire was out, and the mass burial at sea the following day.
The burial date, October thirty-first, was Bill’s mother’s birthday. While Bill has never remarked about the fact that he narrowly escaped injury or death that day, he recently said to me, “Wouldn’t it have been horrible if my mother leaned that I had been buried on her birthday?” (In fact, Bill was able to return home to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a brief family visit two months later. He arrived at his mother’s doorstep at 9 pm on Christmas Eve.)
Remarkably, the story of Bill’s time in hell has a spectacular happy ending. Following the attack, the Belleau Wood was sent to San Francisco for repairs, and while walking on Market Street on leave one day he met Margaret Ehlert, the woman who would become his wife seven months later. They celebrated their sixty-second anniversary this year.
Bill never returned to sea after the attack on the Belleau Wood. He was transferred to Alameda Naval Air Station outside of Oakland, California, where he served until the end of the war in August 1945. He left the service with nine battle stars, a Presidential citation, a Philippine Liberation Medal with two stars, a Philippine Independence Medal, an American Area medal, a Victory Medal and a Halsey’s Commendation Bar (the latter for saving the life of the injured man on the ship).
When I marveled at all of the awards he had received, Bill smiled and replied, “They never put food on the table.”
Then he quietly added, “War is hell.” Bill spoke those words with such conviction it was as if I had never heard them before.
By Ed Martin

A Firsthand Account from a World War II Veteran - Page 4

JCFalkenbergIII · #**261** (**permalink**) March 14th, 2009, 06:18 PM

"On May 10, 1940, the Germans launched their Blitzkrieg on Holland and Belgium. On that day Flight Lieutenant Bill Simpson took off in his Fairey Battle aircraft to attack a large German column reportedly moving through Luxembourg.
'Suddenly there was a heavy thud and flames poured from the engine. There was a series of sickening crunches and we stopped,' he recalled as he belly-landed the aircraft. 'Great sheets of searing flames rushed between my legs and up to 30ft above me. I couldn't disentangle the straps because my scorched hands were completely useless and a tremendous white heat enveloped me.
'It was impossible for me to escape from my trap by my own efforts, so I let my hands drop to my knees and curled myself up, waiting for the release of death. My mind was full of a bloodcurdling scream; but no sound came. If it had it might have relieved the shock.'
Just in time his crew appeared through the flames, tugging at harness straps that had already burned through but they couldn't disguise their shock at his appearance. He looked at his scorched hands: 'I stared at them with an unbelieving terror. . . What would my wife say? 'The skin hung from them like long icicles. The fingers were curled and pointed, like the claws of a great wild bird - distorted, pointed at the ends like talons, ghostly thin. What would I do now? What use would these paralysed talons be to me for the rest of my life?' "

Blood, guts and modesty: 70 years after the start of WWII, a new book records the moving and humorous accounts of a generation of British heroes | Mail Online

JCFalkenbergIII · #**262** (**permalink**) March 21st, 2009, 07:27 PM

"Coldstream Guardsman Bill Weeks described the chaos as the infantry tried to protect the retreating army. 'Not only were you crying, you were probably sick as well and you had probably messed yourself as well with sheer fright! It was unbelievable!

'You can't explain it really - you're petrified. Bang! Crash! This stuff whistling all around you and you're thinking: "What's going on here?"'
He remembered his friend Ernie Costa, 'a local who came from Governments Lane and who died in my arms. He was smoking when he got hit and the cigarette was dangling from his lip and burning him.'
'The only thing that bothered me were the bits of flesh, arms and legs that had been hit by shellfire and sort of disintegrated. You don't want an anonymous missing in action label. That's why you wear your dog tags. It has your name and rank and number - who you are. He may have been decapitated but it's still around "

steve Schaeg · #**263** (**permalink**) March 24th, 2009, 03:37 AM

JC,

Thanks for keeping this thread alive. Stories about the reality of war are so important. I hope you always keep this going.

Hopefully this reaches the "Gamers" of the X-Box fame.
Not so "cool" when men faced their fears in real life.

JCFalkenbergIII · #**264** (**permalink**) March 26th, 2009, 11:16 PM

Thanks Steve. I will certainly do so. Especially in hopes to both show what war is really like and to honor those who had to go though what happened. Those who survied and those who didn't.

steve Schaeg · #**265** (**permalink**) March 27th, 2009, 08:27 PM

Just think how many thousands of stories are out there ?!

Totenkopf · #**266** (**permalink**) April 5th, 2009, 01:47 PM

A German soldier taken prisoner during a German counterattack on the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, Sogel, Germany, 10 April 1945.

This young German doesn't look so different from a holocaust survivor.....

Totenkopf · #**267** (**permalink**) April 5th, 2009, 02:13 PM

"Close-up of a Jerry prisoner captured near Otterloo" after a German counter-attack towards Otterloo, in an attempt to cut the 5th Canadian Division spearhead. 17 Apr. 1945, Otterloo, The Netherlands.

**W Marlowe** · #**268** (**permalink**) June 12th, 2009, 06:25 PM

Gentelmen:

If I may add to the Majors letter as an addendum the bile of fear that rises in you throat as you move from your foxhole to the fighting formation in open country. The raging thurst as you canteen run dry. The numbing fear when one of your men dropps from a bullet in the head. All the unspeakable things you carry in yor memory for the rest of your like. Sic transiet Gloris.

As Ever,

Walter L. Marlowe
( Airborne all the Way)

PzJgr · #**269** (**permalink**) June 12th, 2009, 06:35 PM

There are some experiences that can never ever be conveyed through words.

Totenkopf · #**270** (**permalink**) July 22nd, 2009, 10:28 PM

This communist spy smiles as his last defiance before being executed.

D1J1 · #**271** (**permalink**) August 8th, 2009, 03:46 PM

Has it ever been any different for the young? The call to arms is a call, however false, to great adventure and glory for the rest of their lives. Hopefully the statements here will do some good.

It would however do more good for politicans to read them and take them to heart. I'm not holding my breath for that.

Regards,
Dennis

ChaoS · #**272** (**permalink**) August 11th, 2009, 12:34 PM

Good letter.

I realize that unless I experience, I can never even remotely comprehend.

I would prefer NOT to experience though....

MarcFD · #**273** (**permalink**) August 11th, 2009, 08:21 PM

Although i see the point in this thread

I dont feel it is completely right just to dwell on the harshness of the war

Alot of you have almost spit on the name of war, (and i do unerstand that it is a dirty game) I think there could have been some good in the war.

Maybe the places that soldiers have visited, friends that have been make, wearing a full soldiers uniform, getting a medal or badge, ect

I have a grandfather that was a very young german soldier when he enlisted (he was 14, but lied about his age)

In one story he told me (he doesnt like to talk about war) He was apparently stationed near a highway that went through a mountain line. He was equipped with a few panzerfausts, and a maschinegewehr 34 or 42(i forget)
There was a spearhead of American tanks that was rolling forward (i think he said about 15 or so were coming) and he didnt have much backup along with who was with.

But he said in the distance from behind him, a tiger tank came rolling forward(minutes before all hell would break loose).
(he also said it was one of the most heart warming sights, to see the tiger tank rolling toward this spear head of shermans approaching)

One by one he would hear the loud "boom" sound of the shells being fired. The first one was a direct hit to a sherman. The second missed, but as the tiger kept firing, he could see the sherman tanks being hit by the shells.

In the end, all shermans were knocked off and the tiger tank rolled off back away.

He believes one of the operators of the tiger was Michael Whittman

Some people may not believe in most war stories (I for example have heard alot of BS from some people telling stories, but i try to keep an open mind).
He is a very smart man and is still alive today
I may try and convince him to go to a war vet meeting, you never know what could happen there. :P

So if there are any stories that could shed the tiniest bit of light on war, id like to hear it.

Edit:!
also if anyone knows maybe where this story took place, id like to know(all he said really was that it was an important highway, and it cut straight through a mountain line, so its not much useful info)

I havnt asked my grandpa yet, but i dont like asking him about war every time he see's me
I think it would hurt me, if someone kept asking me about parts of a difficult time during my life.

Totenkopf · #**274** (**permalink**) August 25th, 2009, 10:04 PM

You should try to assert yourself as not trying to make him dwell on the past, but rather him teaching you about a situation that he took the burdon to live through. You should ask him if he can spare a few hours to talk and put a voice recorder on a table and ask him to tell you his beggining to his end. That way his story could live on through the ages.

Most veterans are quite old now and I understand that there are many Germans who feel shamed about their service. I am sure he would feel appreciative of you if you acted in a diplomatic manner and took away all the Politics.

Totenkopf · #**275** (**permalink**) August 25th, 2009, 10:04 PM

An italian soldier killed in action in North Africa, a photo of his child in the right hand.