Posted on 05/06/2015 5:05:40 PM PDT by WhiskeyX
If that is true, where is the gorgeous woman? They are in all of these stories.
Have you ever seen the pictures of Japan one year after the tsunami in contrast with New Orleans one year after the hurricane?
Fascinating. The people look well fed and certainly not fearful. They had to have been glad the war was over and they were in the hands of the Allies.
I don't need to:)
Footage showing surrendering troops to US Army. southern Bohemia, Czechoslovakia 1945. Isn't strange that some Germans still carry weapons when surrendering plus a few shots from Prague.
The US markings on the vehicle imply a location in the western region.
The smile looks relaxed.
Have you posted these to a permanent repository?
Bfl
The scans of all the photos are stored in several places. Only a couple have been uploaded to photobucket.
Stephen Ambrose wrote some great books on our GIs in Europe from D-Day on. Hairy stuff. At the end of one book he had a segment where he asked the veterans, after what you went through, which people do you like/respect the most?
Surprisingly, despite all the grief laid on them, they replied "the Germans" because of just such a trait you mentioned. One guy said that they would enter a bombed out town, shoot it up some more, and by time they got to the far side, people were out in the street behind them clearing the rubble.
By contrast, I lived in Verdun, France in the mid 1960s and our house we rented had a 3 story bombed out building in the back yard with a tree growing out the 3ed floor.
Least liked were the French, who expected the Americans to pay for and rebuild all the damage done, and whined about everything else, while the Italians stole everything that wasn't nailed down.
To the extent they are not personal or proprietary, please upload them to some historical sites. I read some “oral histories” of those times, but a picture tells . . . .
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.