America in WWII - (Page 15) floor of that barn all over Mel and me. Another boy was in there with us and was scared to death. A shell would explode, those hogs would grunt, that boy would whimper, and this went on for the duration of the barrage. As dangerous as the situation was, Mel and I got tickled and couldn’t stop laughing at the whole scene…. While at the Danube we had to guard and maintain a pontoon bridge on a nearby canal. I was on guard duty and had built a fire for warmth under an old bridge abutment. That wasn’t the smartest thing to do, as we had received warning that a lot of enemy patrols were probing our sector…. During the night as I hugged the fire I heard a noise in the woods on the canal bank. I grabbed my carbine and as I whirled around three German soldiers come out with their hands up yelling “kommerad, kommerad” which meant they were surrendering. They sure could have done me in if they had wanted to, but at the time I was more surprised than frightened. After the canal we traveled down the Autobahn highway to Salzburg, Austria, passing multitudes of German prisoners A I WAS THERE marching along the way. We were informed that the war in Europe was over and from Austria we made our way by convoy back across Germany. We turned our vehicles in at an airport in France and I bid farewell to my ole truck the Impatient Virgin, which had carried me for thousands of miles across the battlegrounds of the ETO. We boarded a “forty and eight” [a boxcar used in World War I to transport 40 men or 8 horses] and rode to Antwerp, Belgium. While there I got permission to go by train to Épinal, France, to visit my brother Donald’s grave. At the cemetery I met a soldier who was a close friend of my brother and who had witnessed his death. He told me Donald was struck in the throat by either machine gun fire or shrapnel from a tree burst as his unit was under both artillery and machine gun fire at the time of his death. I just hope my kid broth- er didn’t suffer too much. When I got back to Belgium, Mel and I boarded a Victory ship for home. We landed in the US at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and caught a train to Atlanta, Georgia. There we received our discharge and separation pay and met the publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, who bought us drinks to show his appreciation. The army tried to get us to re-enlist but we’d had enough of our already extended enlistment. We rode buses to Ft. McPherson and then on to Birmingham. On the way we heard a baby crying, which ordinarily is a somewhat irritating sound, but to us it sounded great because it had been a long time since we had heard a baby cry. Our mama was at the station waiting and she came hopping down the sidewalk to meet us. She sure was a happy sight to see and our reunion brought home to me all the more the importance of family and the freedom we’d been fighting for…. A ROD O’BARR of Seymour, Tennessee, submitted these recollections of his father, Milt O’Barr, and wrote the introduction. “A photograph is worth a thousand words” - and now Your WWII era photographs are worth money! Purchasing all WWII photographs, photo albums and scrapbooks. AIRCRAFT • NOSE ART • AIRCRAFT WRECKAGE • TANKS SOLDIERS • COMBAT ACTION • AERIAL BOMB RUNS AMERICAN, GERMAN & JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHS Call 1-800-607-5419 Joe Tonelli • PO BOX 18777 • Minneapolis, MN 55418 If we purchase your photographs we will make high quality copies of them for you to keep at no charge. OCTOBER 2007 AMERICA IN WWII 15
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