I remember clearly...as if it was just weeks ago...the situation I found myself in back in 1945...about this time of the year..mid or late April, in a tiny village in Franken..Germany.
( File picture not related to my story)..
We,mother and four small kids( 6-4-2 and 1 year old) were evacuated to this town called Zeubelried, near Oxenfurt and Frickenhausen because our hometown of Pirmasens( 50,000) was already 80% destroyed,bombed, army boots were produced there and the US army decided that boots are a critical war support product, I guess they were.
We,mother and four small kids( 6-4-2 and 1 year old) were evacuated to this town called Zeubelried, near Oxenfurt and Frickenhausen because our hometown of Pirmasens( 50,000) was already 80% destroyed,bombed, army boots were produced there and the US army decided that boots are a critical war support product, I guess they were.
In any case...one day late April 45 my mother and a few other mothers of small children argued with a bunch of German soldiers and tried to persuade them to leave this little chicken town , but they, the somewhat ragged looking soldiers had other plans.
Apparently, the church roof was visible from a km away...about the only sign that there was a town. And so about 35 of the Wehrmacht decided to take a stand, remove ( destroy) the church so the rapidly advancing US Army would not see the town..I guess they wanted to defend the Vaterland no matter what the consequences.
They did...finally blow up the wonderful little church along with the schoolhouse next to it.
The U.S.Army did take the town and swiftly moved on to conquer the rest of what was left of the Reich.
About 34 corpses of the Wehrmacht were brought to town in a couple of oxen drawn wagons and so the war ended for me as a 7 year old, with the clear images of headless and bloodied bodies of the defenders, one got away ...,what a totally senseless undertaking.
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