[Howie]

My best friend came from Germany to the US, via Canada, in his twenties. He still remembers the WWII bombings of Germany. His mom was a soldier in the German army. They spent weeks in the bomb shelters as the allied bombers pounded the German cities. Anything that looked like it could be industrial was flattened.

When the American troops came through, the people were starving, boiling "grass soup" and such to stay alive. He said the GI's tossed the kids food, candy etc. just like in the movies.

He said the kindest of them all were the black GIs.

[Search4Truth]

When I was in, what I think of as "Ukrainian fly over country", I visited a fishing village on the Sea of Azov, named Novoazovsk.

One of the families I visited there had four generations living in the home. The great grandmother, on her dying bed, in fluent English, told me stories about growing up in post WWII Ukraine.

She said that all the men were gone, either conscripted by the Russians or killed by the Nazis. She and her sister were only children at the times, but her stories were vivid in her mind.

She went on to tell me, that they were boiling shoes for nourishment. And most importantly, she said, that it was the Americans who were the first to arrive there with relief. If it had not been for the Americans, she said, then the entire village would have starved to death. It was from those Americans that she learned to speak English.

I was the first American to visit that village since the post WWII relief efforts. What I found were a Christian-like people who were grateful to the Americans who had saved their lives.

The great grandmother, God rest her soul, referred to America as " the famous country".

I don't know that I have ever been more proud to be an American, than when I was in that small Russian fishing village.

[Mr. Silverback]

In a way, the black GIs were the best, because they were fighting for Europeans to have more freedom than their people ever had, or would have for another 20 years.