How it all started

My dad is a WWII veteran, a 60 mm mortar man, 3rd Army, 97th Infantry Division, Company K - under General Patton when he was in Germany in 1944-45.

He has told me some stories but not a lot. He said that winter was "hell" - cold, wet, snow, bad weather the whole time. He landed in Le Havre, France and then, because he had a military (federal) license to drive, he drove convoy up and down the Normandy Coast, moving equipment, men and weapons. His infantry was at one of four camps in northeastern France - Camp Lucky Strike (all of the camps were named after American cigarettes, so the enemy would not know what they were). He says the "chow line" was so long that you finished breakfast and got back in line for lunch. They were bored a lot of the time waiting to move out. 97th, 303rd regiment, 3rd battalion, company K, 4th platoon.

His unit finally moved east after the Battle of the Bulge. He was in a "holding position" in Meindorf and then his first combat was in Koln but he was in reserve while the other regiments were in Siegburg. They crossed the Rhine river in the country, not in a town and then Griesbach and the last town in Germany was Düsseldorf.
He ended up in Cheb and Tepla near Pilsen. In Tepla, the Germans started surrendering but our man didn't know the war was over so they thought it was a trap. But the Germans were trying to be captured by the Americans since they knew the Russians would be horrible to them. Dad said they made a POW camp in the courtyard of the monastery at Tepla - which our troops had taken over - he took us there, it's beautiful with an amazing library of historic books.

When they finally knew they had secured western Europe, 6 May 1945 in Czechoslovakia, dad drove a jeep to Pilsen and the brewery gave him kegs of beer to take back. He drove the jeep down the tank roads, bouncing all the way. When he got back to the troops, he had no taps so they opened them with tools and beer shot everywhere - but they drank and celebrated.

The young women in western Bohemia greeted them with hugs and bunches of lilacs. It is a symbol to this day.

Patton wanted to continue to Prague but was ordered to stop and wait for the Russians (Patton was correct, in hindsight). So we liberated Czechoslovakia from the Nazis and Hitler and then turned it over to Stalin and the Communists. The Czech people say they were liberated again in 1991 when the Iron Curtain fell.

Since 1991, the Czech people have been able to resurrect monuments to our army - to the US soldiers who liberated them. During communist rule, the school children were taught that Russians liberated them from Hitler, dressed in American uniforms. I learned this from survivors of the invasion and liberation - they said that "under penalty of execution" they told their children the truth in their homes, because "we were there. We heard them speaking English, they gave us American candy bars." But they had to tell their children to NOT repeat the stories outside of their homes.

My father has visited Pilsen in 1995 (50 year anniversary of VE Day), 2000, 2005, 2006 (this time after D Day 2006), 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017 and we are going back this year - 74 years after the end of the war.