1944

A 1944 YANK article tells the tale about a quiet little spot behind the front line where American GIs were able to enjoy 24 hours of peace before being returned to the meat-grinder:

Sergeant Carmine Daniello, of Brooklyn, New York, smoked a big cigar during the afternoon…he was taking it easy in his own way. He didn’t want to sleep just now. He said, ‘Just sitting around like this is all I want right now.’On the other side of the river it had been so bad…

CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…

An eye-witness account of the first major American battle to be fought on German ground during World War II. Aachen, the Westernmost city in Germany was defended by some 44,000 men of the Wehrmacht as well as assorted elements of the First SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Division which combined to offer a stubborn defense that lasted nineteen days. This article, written by Bill Davidson, who witnessed the most vicious kind of street combat, believed that the battle for Aachen was simply a re-staging of the battle of Stalingrad and he supports this point throughout the article:

Godfrey Blunden,the Australian war correspondent, was here in Aachen…he was immediately struck by the similarity between the two battles. ‘There is is the same house-to-house and room-to-room fighting, the same combat techniques, the same type of German defense.’

Years later, historian Stephen Ambrose remarked that the Battle of Aachen was unnecessary.

The contested forts of Verdun (Battle of Verdun, 1916), Fort Douamont, Fort Souville and Fort Vaux, were little more than storage sheds to the American army of World War Two; and during the four years of German occupation, the forts played a similar roll for the German army as well. This is a neat article that briefly touches on the importance of these structures during the previous war and what kind of flotsam and jetsam the GIs were able to find as they wandered about the forts (like a W.W. I skeleton). Of particular interest was a wall that was covered with the names of various combatants from all sides and from both wars:

The American names are big and black and seem to blot out the others. One of them says:

Austin White, Chicago, Ill., 1918 and 1944.

This is the last time I want to write my name here.

Click here to read more magazine articles about the African-American efforts during the First World War.

The story of Sergeant Frank Kwiatek, a W.W. I veteran who remained in the U.S. Army long enough to serve in the next war and have-at the Germans all over again. His distaste for German snipers was remarkably strong.