DIRTY SECRETS of WW2: Men of the 84th Division

these are the men who served in the 84th in vision during the final months of World War first committed to action on the Siegfried line in November 1944 they were quickly caught up in the Battle of the Bulge and the series of conclusive engagements that followed this is their story by the beginning of November 1944 the defeat of Germany appeared in the East Russian armies had pushed their way through Poland in the Balkans to the south Anglo American forces were moving relentlessly up the Italian peninsula to the West allied armies having advanced through France and the Low Countries now gathered along the borders of western Germany altogether we were on a siegfried line for about three weeks and my memories of that are pretty much blurred it was mostly mud and cabbages and every now and then we did have a slight move forward but for the most part we were just in the foxholes usually filled with water American soldiers on the whole I believe find it very difficult to hate we spoke of the Germans and thought of the Germans as our enemy but there was no such thing as violent hatred the noncommissioned officer in the American army is unique he has to be the leader of his men but many of the men under him can also be leaders one of the chief problems that faces any replacement officer is measuring up to the opinions the men had of the officers that commanded them before and after we got all the battalions settled down in their foxholes for the night I dug out a pair of blue silk pajamas if my wife had insisted that I put in my bedroom and put them on and crawled in my bedroom to sleep for the night of course this news spread around over the battalion immediately and my purpose was achieved because all of the men felt that the old man had gotten his so pajamas and going to bed that certainly there was no trouble or they were in great danger so they relaxed and were able to get a good night's rest these are the men who served in the 84th Infantry Division the division that distinguished itself in a series of critical engagements during World War two thus this story would be the story of any infantry division where the uncommon virtues of courage endurance and self-sacrifice became the commonplace good old m1 rifle semi-automatic breech loaded seems a lot heavier than it did 20 years ago my name is John Shaw I was for the 84th Infantry Division as a buck private during world war ii i was one of these ASTP boys 3,000 of his ship down to the 84th Division in April before we went overseas in 1944 and we were trained hard and sent overseas in September and we're in England for a while and then we caught the red ball Express and then before we knew it we were right on the edge of the line ready to go into combat and we were all of us kind of wondering what things were going to be like we could see the shells going off we could hear them and we were all sort of nervous but I don't think anyone was really fully conscious and aware of what was going to happen the men of the 84th division had managed to penetrate the enemy lines a few hundred yards east of the Dutch frontier but the Siegfried line barred the way to further advance this fortified zone of tank traps gun emplacements and pillboxes had become a shield behind which we read German troops now assembled general Siegfried Westphal chief of staff to Field Marshal von Winstead had this to say the situation the Dadaji fuel invested wisely was essential all the German high command in the West to gain time in order to react with the West's fortifications called secret line for defense purposes we had to make every effort therefore to see to it that our troops could maintain this position as long as possible best fish is as Xperia I also knocked in various motion was passed upon the West fortifications had no weapons the why entanglements have been dismantled and even some of the keys to unlock the rusty dugouts were missing the defensive value of these constructions was so minimal that the soldiers prefer to live in the trench under the open sky rather than have the concrete ceiling collapse over their heads we reported this to Hitler we flew into a rage and retorted the whole world trembles and feels this phenomenal achievement of German technology very super fun around those the 84th divisions immediate mission part of a general offensive was to crack the siegfried line at the town of guilin cookin and then establish speech heads on the nearby roar River beyond lay the main objective the Rhine I'm lieutenant general Louis W Truman during World War two I was a colonel chief of staff of the 84th Infantry Division and chief of staff to Alexander are bullying the commanding general of the 84th division the intelligence which we received was of the very best the individuals clear down to the squad level we're indoctrinated instructed exactly what their jobs were to be there is no question but that we were very had very much confidence that we'd be able to carry out this mission I know also that the regiments the battalions the companies and the teens who squads had that same feeling of confidence the 84th division would be supported by the British on the left and the Americans second armored and 1o second infantry on the right tracing them were several folks Grenadier division and a number of crack Panzer units if precisely five minutes to 7:00 on the morning of November 18 and artillery barrage signaled the attack had commenced aggghhhhh island kirkin was about three miles away from where we were and so happened that our regiment was leading the attack and happened to be in the first Platoon of the first company and I have to be in the first squad of the first platoon and so happened that I was the first count so I was first and we came through a little woods and out onto a sports plot so we shot across this clearing and into the outskirts of the town and there was a trench there and we walked up the trench all of us feeling pretty happy at this point and and pretty proud of ourselves for having gotten that far and we seen to me the whole company was strung out into one big line and all of a sudden the German in a window of three blocks away buttoned up on ours our column in this trench with a machine gun and of course we all hit the dirt and we just waited there for somebody to do something finally a British tank lumbered up the street off to our side and and fired two shells right into that window that was the end of that I'm Richard K Hawkins I was a first lieutenant with a company 330 4th infantry of the 84th Infantry Division it was necessary for complete cooperation between various branches of the army since it was necessary for the infantrymen to attack on foot seize the ground and hold it it was also necessary for artillery to neutralize these positions before the infantrymen jumped off it was a wonderful show of cooperation between these different branches we got through guilin kirkin and we started on the road that we thought was taking his right to berlin we felt great and we were pretty excited about being in the war that's we've gone about 500 yards up the road the 88 started coming in like fools we ran into a little wood and all of us try to do our best to dig into the ground we used our hands that just tried to claw the dirt trying to dig in meantime these shells were coming into the trees and bursting all around us and our friends were being hit or screaming for medics this lasted that scene for about half an hour I suppose it lasted about five minutes I am Fred Kramer I was with the 84th division at a rather elderly soldier for my 35th - my 37th year I do remember very clearly now the feelings we had like all men who go into battle for the very first time we were answered they're very unsure of ourselves we knew very well that combat was very different to train and I remember this excitement and I may frankly say for all soldiers who may come at us you are also full of fear not necessarily fear of the enemy but fear of our own making it or not making how we stand up I think our general told us later that he had been praying in those hours and he committed and then he had trained the first time for combat I know now we all know now that the battle went well and that our one regiment that was attached to combat proven British forces did well found the phrase of the British and we immediately gain extraordinary increase in self-confidence we had met the enemy and while we said they hadn't performed any great heroics we felt our self-confidence greatly increased I'm Donald Phelps of the sergeant in the 330 3rd infantry of the 84th division we found that he to sneak up to full boxes easily at night the hit and run the biggest problem and this type of action was that the regular emplacements of the German armament filled boxes at everything so zeroed in that all major road intersections were under constant interdicting fire by the 21st of November the Siegfried line had been dented the objectives in and around guilin kirkin had been taken the 84th now headed for the roar river a few miles distant general bowling picked the village of lennick as the ideal location for the planned river crossing before our actual combat experience we always thought that engineers were people who came along after we passed through and repaired bridges and so forth we actually had engineer squads with each rifle platoon whose function was to place explosive charges and fill box and lasers this helped a great deal in overcoming this resistance in the murderous frontal attack that followed several discoveries were made all sectors of the German Western Front had strict orders to relinquish his little German territory as possible every inch of ground was to be defended tenaciously the uncertainty concerning the Allied situation posed an especially conspicuous problem whenever knows what the enemy has obviously but does not know for certain how strong he is one does not know about his disposition many things can only be guessed but there are certain impressions one does acquire we whelp the opinion that the American unit excellently equipped inand a good leadership was headed for ultimate success confident of victory besides the command was prudent advancing step by step just be trying to avoid bloodshed wherever possible if flip sigga sigga their fault and finish far out there by the end of November the German defenses west of the roar have been either captured or neutralized by men of the 84th division on December 2nd the coveted prize of lennick fell to the neighboring 1o second division to sum up the actions of the 84th division in the guile encryption area in the Siegfried line it had reduced or captured eight strong points or villages it had captured or destroyed over a hundred and twelve bunkers it had captured 28 officers and over 1500 enlisted men it had engaged 15 different kinds of German units to include SS troops and Panzer units and we might say is an overall sum up every mission had been accomplished while the allies made preparations for the crossing of the roar a major offensive was about to be launched by the combined German forces the offensive codenamed watch on the Rhine would be more generally known as the Battle of the Bulge it was Hitler's last opportunity to achieve the initiative on the Western Front and at least 28 divisions would be engaged in this desperate gamble the field that I am on this afternoon is representative of those around Marsh Belgium that are now being farmed again in December of 1944 much in contrast these fields were not being farmed there were streams of refugees all through the area again moving out with it because the intelligence was or there rumors were that the Germans again were coming into the town of Marsh about nine o'clock on the morning of the 20th of December general bowling along with couple of staff officers an aide and four MPs went to verviers belgium where the first Army Headquarters was he asked what the enemy information was and the only thing they could tell him as it was fluid also he asked for what the mission of the division would be in the marsh area he was told that there the divisions should go into an assembly area as the front bows further westward the principal road centers of LaRouche and Sam V Belgium fell to the Germans Bastogne was encircled and his capitulation seemed certain unless the town of Marche Belgium remained in allied hands it seemed probable the Germans could take the river Meuse and sweep on to Paris the 84th division was ordered to withdraw from its positions on the roar and take up a defensive line along the marsh Houghton Road it was at this time that we got sudden orders to move we were loaded into the army trucks and we started moving back we heard all kinds of rumors we heard the Germans had broken through we heard there was a big offensive everything was confused but all we knew we were on the road moving again versus would only been a month before that we'd moved up by truck so we were kind of used to it but this was a night move in the dark around the back corners and orders were changed constantly we never knew from one minute the next what was going on on our way back we ran into trailers bringing up assault boats to cross rivers with their apparently will for us but we weren't going to be there to be with them we finally found it at the end of this truck route which was very circuitous we ended up in the town of Marsh in Belgium and although our orders were a little unclear we were told to hold the town at all costs we spurred had our first snow at this point and digging foxholes and icy ground was a little difficult but we kept always on the move and our company was seen to be ending up as division reserve so we were sent here and there on little jobs and filling up the gaps and trying to get situation under control we spent our first night in Belgium billeted in this huge stone barn with hay and big fat cows and horses chomping around us and we were excited to be were once again there was some life we went down the road and had a nice chicken dinner with some eggs and milk food that we hadn't had it seemed like weeks and weeks and there seemed to be no nervousness about Germans until later on that night when we spotted way across the valley of a column of tanks going up the road and somebody pointed out that those were German tanks and we had been told we were miles miles behind the front that's when we realized that there was a good deal of confusion in the general picture in Belgium well after that we went by truck to a little town called Wan LAN and met a very lovely Belgian woman in a French or Belgian chateau who had two daughters and she was just getting them into the car to drive them to Brussels she said they had a appointment with the oculist and was only later that we realize she was fleeing as fast as she could and she knew that the situation was very bad and later on that night we had our first encounter with some German tanks which came along and fired at us and we fired back and they went on back the road that they'd come from but we realized we were in what they call a fluid situation with nobody quite certain where the front lines were least of all us I'm Major General Bill Sutton and I was a battalion commander in general Boeing's 84th Railsplitter division during World War two I arrived at the rear CP of the 84th division in Holland on the 20th of December 1944 and moved down with the division to Marsh Belgium on the 22nd of December to say that the situation was fluid is putting it lightly in Marsh Belgium every other house was occupied by Germans there was firing up and down the streets the three 34th infantry and organized positions along the front edge of the marsh Haughton Ridge I remember that the foxholes were sometimes 150 yards apart they had been dug and frozen ground sometimes with the aid of explosives the position was considerably overextended and various pockets of German tanks and infantry existed all up and down the line and during the day the Germans had infiltrated tanks and infantry into a wooded area back to the frontlines and in front of the reserve elements and they were discovered quite by accident by a small unit going up to reinforce a an attack that took the wrong road and ran into this pocket of German tanks and infantry and they backed off and reported this the 84th division artillery fired on this pocket which was pretty - fine and they knocked out all of these tanks and kill several hundred Germans when the artillery had finished firing one battalion I remember the 3:26 had only six rounds of ammunition left we had other ammunition on a way but no one knew exactly when it would get there it was a rather touch-and-go situation there are many things imprinted on my mind will make me always remember the kind of stuff our American soldiers were made of one instant in particular occurred in the Ardennes during the Battle of the bows we were advancing toward BHEL Belgium and mortar shell came in and wounded several men right close around me one man that was almost an arm's reach out of me and I could see that he was hit badly with the back of his head practically bone hole and he was in a state of shock I tried to comfort the man propped his head up until the medics could reach him and all this time and I shall never forget this this man was trying to apologize for me for being hit and sorry almost crying because he would not get to carry on with the battalion and continue to fight the Marche houghton line situated as it was at the extreme tip of the Bulge received the full weight of the German attack chance had placed the fate of his offensive in the hands of an American Infantry Division for the men of the 84th there was no question as to why I found the safest place to be and any attack was in the assault wave because we were upon the enemy before he knew we were coming we escaped much of a small arms fire and in addition we didn't get the retaliation from his artillery that the waves following us got and in this town as we did on all of our objectives each company commander and separate platoon was ordered to take a certain position followed the practice of writing a message on an egg on a French egg that they had taken their objective and what time and sent this by messenger to the battalion sergeant major battalion headquarters and this is where we got our fresh eggs as we cross Germany as we were leaving for the attack that night the first sergeant said take it easy and don't get hurt I said sure I won't but I knew right then that I was going to get it and a half dollar later I did we've been fighting them for ten weeks and we brought back a spirit of feeling of confidence not only in the staff but also in the regiments battalions and even competent companies which really put us in good stead for the future December 1944 in a last effort to regain the military initiative Hitler had ordered a major counter-offensive in the Ardennes as fog and sleep grounded all Allied planes German infantry and Panzer units swept fifty miles in the Belgium recapturing the key road junctions and surrounding the defenders of Bastogne a major part of the German attack was turned against the town of Marsh Belgium the key to the river Meuse beyond which lay Paris only recently liberated and and were the Allies cheap supply for the 84th Infantry Division had hurriedly left the Siegfried line and had taken up defensive positions along the marsh Houghton Road only by the most heroic resistance with the Allies be able to hold in the flanks of the Nazi salient and keep the enemy line from bulging further westward I'm Richard K Hawkins I was a first lieutenant with a company 330 fourth infantry of the 84th Infantry Division we were spread over an extremely wide frontage our rifle company actually covered close to a mile and and with with foxholes two men each roughly about 100 yards apart this is perhaps four to five times the usual amount of frontage that a rifle company will cover in a defensive situation there were several times when our forces were attacked by great numbers of Tanks and one instance near the village of Verdun approximately 200 in infantry and nine tiger tanks attacked us and actually overrun our position this was one of the few times and which it became necessary for me to call down artillery fire on our own position enemy cavities during the Battle of the Bulge were much higher than ours through the fact they were expending themselves against defensive position and this happens in any battle however they had fire overextended their supply lines and many of the troops that we captured had not had any food for some time and I would say that their casualties outnumbered ours by at least three to one this stately Chateau situated the edge of the village of Verdun is the property of a Polish Baron during the December fighting it became a house of horrors as it was methodically disfigured by some of the bitterest hand-to-hand fighting of the war a member of the family recalls no Elizabeth or the skiers my name is Elizabeth the rowdy ski and I spent many days in the castle at well den we witnessed the whole battle and I was with my father and a few people from the village and some friends who had come here to find shelter we spent five days and five nights in the cellar of the country first came the Germans then Americans generally we could not tell who was in the castle although we did notice that the Americans were rubber soles they worked softly well as the Germans who wore metal tips were very noisy our food consisted of bread some butter and ham the ill problem was to get water we had to work through corridors where Germans and Americans were often fighting in order to reach the faucet where we could get the water sometimes we would meet American sometimes a week after the Ardenne offensive had begun the weather suddenly cleared allied air reconnaissance in bombardment was now possible Lyde air superiority was complete the ground fighting remained intense throughout the Bulge the turning point in the battle for Mars came on December 26th i'm donald phelps of the sergeant in the theater and 33rd infantry of the 84th division i was leading the company column on the left-hand side of the road and the company commander was leading on the right hand side as we broke over the top of the hill it became apparent that there were some armored vehicles ahead of us i knew that we needed something to really go after vehicles of this type with and that the bazooka which was being carried by another man farther back in the 1st platoon did not come up as fast that light I found the bazooka back in the platoon behind me but found the ammunition was across the road I wrote it once got up real close and fired and I was very gratified that the bazooka worked properly and I made a good hit I've never fired one before I made two or three back trips back to the ammunition supply and up and fired again all of a sudden somebody had spotted that we needed some help in that area and some of our artillery fired who crossed my hand and arm and I said came I felt it burn and I heard it bounced off the end of the Zilka I realized that had been hit but it didn't seem too serious one of the men near me also realized I've been hit he came over see if he'd give me a we succeeded in putting a tourniquet around my arm by using my belt but then I started back down the road after we get back a couple of tunes action was such that I could stand up and walk down the road and all I could think I was Merry Christmas boys my name is John Shaw I fought as a buck private with the 84th Infantry Division during World War two this excruciating ly cold knife remember trying to get a drink from my canteen which was frozen solid and so we started out through the woods crouching and moving forward and then someone yelled fire and and shout and so we started firing and shouting and the tracers went through the woods and we moved on in a kind of hysterical way getting more and more excited as we move forward and heard more noise and we're firing we went perhaps 20 feet or 25 all of a sudden there was that terrible noise that a person hates to hear the little pop of a flare and it was a German flare and it lit up the whole woods there we were and there they were the Germans then opened up with machine-gun fire and eighty-eight and I know I had a kind of sinking feeling that this was it I this was the first real fighting that that our company had been in where we were playing boys and we knew that this was for keeps and and all of us were these machine gun bullets were firing a few feet off the ground and then occasionally as they would rake up and down this line of all through the woods occasionally they would dip down and then you hear somebody screaming from that section where they dip down and they sprayed us like just if they had a garden hose they sprayed and sprayed and then the more flares went up and the tanks opened up directly again with 88 fire the man on my left killed outright then the man on my right so equally close was was wounded very seriously recap was blown off and the cries and shrieks of wounded really went up then and I I turned to the man on my right and put a tourniquet on his leg my name is Major General Bill Sutton and I was a battalion commander in the 84th Division in World War two it was critically important for the 84th division to hold the marsh cotton Ridge and stop the attack and only by the determination of the officers and men of the 84th division and the expert leadership general bowling the division commander were they able to do this after the German advance was stopped in the last few days of December the Germans were noticed to be digging in and front of position which indicated they did not intend to continue attacking the bows would bulge no further Hitler had again misjudged the capacity of the American soldier because it can tear does it my name is Kal theodore secret west fire my last rank in the German army was that of a general of the cavalry from the beginning of September 1944 until May 1945 I was command of the general staff of commander chief West Hitler has a vast and extensive technique but he was a fanatic for that for their disability to keep a cool head and weigh their thoughts carefully this however is an absolute necessity for strategist at the same time Hitler was not inclined to consider the enemy capable of accurate and fast action he was and remained a military dilettante that is enough are also self-identity even so by an ish tonight now this TS or status and then she should be their vows we were the cost to Germany of Hitler's miscalculations would be staggering more than a quarter of a million men dead wounded or captured at least 1400 tanks and guns destroyed or abandoned slowly and painfully the remnants of the once-proud bear macht retreated behind their shattered Western defences it was the beginning of the end by the 3rd of February the 84th division had again moved back to their positions on the Siegfried line their watery objectives lay before the roll the Rhine and the Elbe I'm lieutenant general Louis W Truman during World War two I was a colonel chief of staff of the 84th Infantry Division and chief of staff for Alexander our bowling who was the commanding general of the 84th Infantry Division the Ruhr river crossing was one of the most thoroughly rehearsed river crossings of any unit in the European fair the original crossing date was to be 10 February but it was postponed because the Germans had flooded the area so we then had about two more weeks in which to work out all the details very thoroughly and to rehearse all the units for the overall operation it's amazing that we ever got across the river considering the confusion that takes place during preparations for the attack if you can imagine us being pitch dark with a narrow road with huge trucks with buttons for the assault bridges to come later on one side of the road in a very now strip available to move up troops through when you consider the horrible noise of the artillery preparation which lasts for 45 minutes prior to our crossing during this time commands can't be heard and it's very difficult to give any orders and expect them to be carried out the Germans had constructed a rather wide band of wire barbed wire on the far side of the roller River and studied it with s-mines which bounced up in the air when triggered off about six feet and exploded there and making it impossible for anybody to avoid the fragment this minefield and barbed wire forced out of the river made the Royal River one of the biggest Little rivers in the world as far as I was concerned before that day was over we had two full infantry regiments across the Germans were caught off balance they did counter-attack us at the town of ball but they were unable to organize themselves fast enough and after three days our position on the other side of the river was secure it was general Bolling's impression at that time that the German soldier was no longer the same soldier when we had faced earlier the point now was to break through all of the resistance and give the enemy no time to catch his breath or to recover even for a moment the final phase of the war began for us on April the 1st when we crossed the Rhine everything we had was on wheels and they were all turning we roll across the northern part of Germany on autobahns for the most part at great speeds and long convoys this was exciting because we were covering so much ground compared to what it had been like on the Siegfried line earlier we rarely had to get out of the trucks except when we'd run into a rash of firing and would have to jump out and run for cover and then after a while the whatever difficulty would be taken care of and then would roll on again if combat can be described as as fun this was because the weather was fine and we were rolling and we were going through a part of Germany which had not been much shot up and we saw billions for the first time German civilians and we were able to shout at Froy lines and do all the things soldiers liked to do allied morale was high for each man of the 84th knew that the war was near attempt during the more and more frequent lows in fighting there was time for a little relaxing time even the humorous anecdote army rations were pretty good but one day after too many servings of corned beef we spotted a half-starved German chicken one of the men went out gutting for he was using an m1 rifle but he had armor-piercing bullets in it the soup we made that night we had to strain the bones through our teeth I am Fred Kramer I was with an icky force division at a rather elderly soldier for my 35th - my 37th year in one respect I have to admit however I probably was not a very typical and normal soldier I did like the army food I wanted to get lots of food I got it I wanted to get simple food I got it very many of my playmates and felt that the army food was not good but I must say in this connection that I have found in life that the people who went travelling complained that the oysters are never fresh enough and the champagne never cold enough are generally people who at home and neither champagne noiseless there was one fellow that we had it was really sharp at gathering eggs he knew where they all were and he gathered a big arm full of them one morning it was very early about 5 o'clock and he was just coming around the corner of a building and German officer came around the other way and they stared at each other for a second and then he took the eggs that he had in one hand he threw them all about five or six of the right of the German officer and the German then ran around the building the other side and later on the German said to us in the impeccable English he said you know you fellows they're lousy soldiers he said I've been trying to surrender all night long and he said now finally you throw eggs at me and here he said I've been trying to surrender but there were other German soldiers who found surrender less of a problem this experience was noted by a new member of the 84th division Lieutenant Colonel Alexander bowling jr. then a rifle company commander and the son of the commanding general you only recently escaped from a German prisoner of war camp by the end of April a company had reached the Elbe River and this started a short but rather strange life for the men in the unit the Germans had naturally withdrawn across the river to the other side and they permitted us strangely enough to enjoy a degree of freedom during the daylight hours we actually could go out into the river and fish near our banks of course but at nighttime any movement along the river whatsoever drew fire at that particular time there was a degree of mixed emotions among the men in the company particularly in which they wanted to go on and be the first unit into Berlin which had been the division of jetty of ever since they landed in Europe and at the same time the soldiers I don't believe wanted to have the honour of being the last man last casualty in the war and I must admit the old looked very wide at that time after just a few days really on the Elbe we awoke one morning and discovered much to the amazement of everybody that the far bank was virtually covered with tens of thousands of German soldiers desperately trying to get across to our side it was quite apparent that there was no effort this wasn't an attack and as a result there was no effort on our part to prevent this crossing they were trying to get across on rafts that they had made during the night and on boats on inner tubes any way they could get across and they were quite successful and this of course was the day when our battalion and I guess the division captured the largest number of prisoners the war wasn't over but the Germans had decided that they were going to surrender to us rather than to the Russians one of the lasting memories for me of this last action was when General bowling and I crossed through the very Swift Elbe River to meet the oncoming Russian this was on the 26th of April on the far bank of the river where at least 10,000 German soldiers who had not yet been taken prisoner some were wounded others were sick and all were thoroughly demoralized the very sight though of so many men trapped there on the other side of the river symbolized for me the total collapse of the German army and the absolute conclusion of hostilities when we finally encountered the Russians and the opposite bank of the Elbe they appeared to be a rather motley disorganized crew with all kinds of transportation including horse-drawn wagons ambulances motorcycles bicycles and even a few riding bareback plow horses they were very friendly boisterous lot who seemed extremely happy to meet up with the Americans and finally realized that the war was at an end for those who met at the Elbe on that April day in 1945 the war had reached its inevitable conclusion on May 7th the end would be made official by the formal surrender of all German forces to the Allies the Third Reich which Hitler had proclaim would last a thousand years now lay buried within the rubble of a devastated Germany for the majority of Germans there was nothing left to fight with nothing left to fight for

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Keywords: world war 2, battles, combat, infantry, military, d-day, missions, artillery, planes, tanks, strategy, tactics, stories, allies, axis, weapons, cod, games, veteran, army, marines, american, europe, germany, france, action, best, politics, geographic, color

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Length: 55min 18sec (3318 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2016