Wow! Great Thread.
My 84 year old Father wants to make the trip this summer to see Normandy Beach. He has been to France since WW2. But in WW2 he got the the area a couple of months later. His unit was the The 20th Armored Division, Combat Command R
and he was in the 70th Armored Infantry Battalion. The Got to Germany in 1945 and helped liberate some of the death camps. Over the years he has not said much about his experience and I guess its like most WW2 vets that the did what they had to do.
Last Fall we went to DC to the WW2 veteran’s Memorial and he opened up a little more to me about the time spent in the service. His unit help got to the Dachau Concentration Camp and he said the stench was horible and the conditions of the Jews there even more horible.
My Father in the 50 years I have lived never mentioned the situation of seeing Dachau with his own eyes to any of his kids. He and my Mother had traveled to Germany a few years back and revisited the area.
So I hope that this summer I can travel with my Father to view Normandy and then on to Germany to see for myself what made the WW2 Veterans the GREATEST GENERATION in AMERICAN HISTORY!
By the way I forgot to add that he was an AMERICAN JEW serving US ARMY. Perhaps thats another reason that he never talked much about his unit liberating Dachau.