00:00:00,467	S1:
As you just mentioned, I'm Vernon Chandler from Hamilton. Thank you all for coming today. Um, perhaps you came to remember a family member who did not survive World War Two. Perhaps you came to remember one that did survive World War two but never spoke about it. Um, you'll see a lot of you'll see a lot of, uh, historical places in this presentation. Um, and you'll hear a lot. What started out as a family, my family, uh, research expanded greatly. And you'll you'll hear more about that. So today, I'd like to share with you a World War two European journey. My son, Brian Chandler, he's the handsome guy on the right. I'm the other guy. Um, and, uh, 20, 24 and 25 had many notable 80th anniversaries for World War two. Uh, one of the greatest calamities to befall me. Humanity. Tomorrow marks the 84th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Oh, um. Our journey had many sources of inspiration and took the help of a lot of people to make happen. Both. Both on this side of the pond and over in Europe. As you'll see, our mission was and still is to honor and remember our World War II citizen soldiers and their families. And it's key to remember it was the soldiers, obviously, and the nurses who were over there. But the families that were back here paid equally as did the as did the soldiers. And most especially, we'd like to thank the people of the Netherlands and you'll hear why.

00:01:46,067	S1:
They still remember and honor their liberators. And that's what they call our soldiers and their families. And I want to thank the Historical Society for inviting me back. I spoke about Two years ago. Three years ago. Something like that, right after I came back. This wasn't as polished as it is now. Um, and I also I want to wish, uh, Anne Marie Cullen and Rosie Kennedy a quick recovery. I don't. It was because of my presentation that they're laid up. But if you if you noticed on the way in, there's a presentation outline kind of helps you follow along to where we are, uh, as well as a World War II resources list, which is websites, Facebook groups, and most importantly, books. And I have a number of those books here to to show you. And if you see anything in the presentation that you'd like a copy of, I have no pride of ownership over anything. Do you want a copy of any picture or anything? Just just let me know and I can get it for you. It's on an email sign up sheet back there. I'm going to move rather quickly. So if you see something you'd like. Um, vote it down and let me know. So let's get started on our journey.

00:03:05,801	S2:
To hell.

00:03:07,467	S1:
This is the Netherlands American Cemetery in Groton, the Netherlands.

00:03:16,000	S1:
There we go. And I like to start with dedications of kind of unrelated soldiers unrelated to my family. This was a soldier, uh, who was killed in a training accident in Fort Stewart, Georgia. And my nephew was he was in a tank. My nephew was in another tank right behind him, and his tank, along with three other soldiers, rolled over a bridge and into the water, and all crew members drowned. And my nephew, Sergeant David Weston, escorted his remains home, uh, to his family. And I am in communication with his mom, Teresa, all the time. And she really greatly appreciates to having this dedicated to her son. Okay, a little bit about me. I was born in Medford. I moved to Redding when I was five years old. I graduated high school in 1970. I married in 77 and moved to Hamilton in 84. Been here ever since. My interest in World War Two has really piqued. Now that I've had more time to to to look into it, uh, both European and Pacific theater history. And I'm addicted to the Band of brothers and the Pacific. As you could probably tell by the sound background. Um, I'm passionate about both. So based on my being born in Medford and living in Redding, in Hamilton, I was interested in researching, uh, soldiers from each of those locations.

00:04:54,701	S1:
This is a little bit about my Medford, mass. Family, which is kind of a genesis of this whole research project. My parents and grandparents all lived in Medford. My maternal grandmother's sister, Annie. Annie Miller, her husband and two oldest sons all fought in World War Two at the same time. So imagine you have your husband and your two oldest boys. Overseas in in in in combat. Chief Machinist's Mate John Miller was in the Seabees. I believe he was in the Pacific Theater. Sergeant William Miller, one of my cousins, was in the 30th Infantry Division, which is known as Old Hickory. And then Private Kenneth E Miller, which was who I started researching. He was in the seven 43rd Tank Battalion. He was killed in action during the battle of the bulge or so. My family fought for many, many years.

00:05:54,767	S1:
Okay, so my oldest son, Brian, was a diplomat at the US embassy in Vienna. He was stationed there for three years and his three year tour was up in 2023. He's in Dallas, Texas now. Um, my son and I began to conceive of this trip in late 2021, when my wife and I spent Christmas in Vienna. Quite a place to spend Christmas, that's for sure. Um. My hometown soldiers research and driving tour planning begin shortly after I got back from that winter in Vienna. Sadly, my mom passed away in August of 22, so I couldn't really continue preparing at that time.

00:06:42,100	S1:
So based on the three towns I lived in, I wanted to research and I had help from a local historian. Many of you may know Autumn Hendrickson. She's writing a book in in Redding about Redding's boys. She provided me all the historical information on these boys who were killed. All killed. There's my cousin, Private Kenneth Miller, and then everybody in this room probably knows of General George Patton. And maybe less known as Sidney Meyer. But you'll hear more about him.

00:07:22,300	S1:
Did you know what the people of the Netherlands do? They adopt the graves and memorials of our fallen World War Two American soldiers known and unknown. They refer to them as their liberators. It started right away in 1945 and continues to this day. They passed these adoptions from generation to generation, and there's a waiting list to adopt graves and memorials in Groton is about 10,000 graves and names on the wall of the missing. And they have the the the you'll see the the adopter of my cousins. She waited 15 years to get to be an adopter of a memorial. It's an amazing book that just came out by Robert Edsel. You may know of him as the author of The Monuments Men. It was a book about an a movie about recovering stolen art treasures throughout Europe. He wrote a book called Remember Us American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and a Forever Promise in World War Two. This is that book right here. Highly recommended. Unbelievable, Unbelievable.

00:08:49,000	S1:
And they also work to put a face to every grave. The faces of my Groton program. When I returned from Europe. They sent me this book and my cousin. I earmarked where my cousin is is named in the book. That just the size of the book tells you how many there are. Oh, then they celebrate their National Remembrance Day, which is kind of referred to as the day of their dead, then their Liberation Day. And then they celebrate the United States Memorial Day, all in May. People of Belgium, France and Luxembourg also adopt graves, but it's a less of a formal program, as it is in the Netherlands. There's Mark Rutten in around 1945.

00:09:41,000	S1:
There they are today, not only the older folks, but the young.

00:09:48,767	S1:
Okay. I'll go through this rather quickly not to dwell on it too much, but this is my cousin, his father, John, and his mother, Annie. He was the second in of seven children. William was his older brother. And then he. There were four boys and three girls. You'll hear more about William later. He was in the seven 43rd Tank Battalion. He was first reported as missing in action, then killed in action on October 18th, 1944, in Berlin, Germany. He was 19. We found out that it was indeed the Battle of Aachen. Aachen is the ancient city of Charlemagne, the ruler of the First Reich in the Holy Roman Empire that was based out of Aachen, Germany. I got a lot of research and information from the US Army. What they call the IDF is an individual deceased personnel file that provides critical personal details. The Battalion After Action report provides critical battle details can. It turns out, was one of a 180 killed in action or missing in action from his battalion in World War two. This IDF includes heartbreaking letters from his mom. And here we met his Dutch adopter, Diane Luce, and her family. As I said, she waited 15 years to adopt. There's Ken Miller and his baby face. There's my mom, his older brother, William. There's Ken.

00:11:37,100	S1:
Older brother, William and Ken and their youngest brother, Paul I have since passed away. This is the wall of the missing in the Netherlands American cemetery that's dying loose. His Dutch adopter. This is, uh, Trudy. I forget her last name. Becker's and Trudy Becker's. Yes. She worked for the American Battle Monuments Commission at the American National, uh, Netherlands American Cemetery. Every year in May, she sends us and posts on. I have a Facebook page dedicated to my to my cousin, and she posts on it every year remembering she puts flowers. May 4th. May 5th and Memorial Day in the US.

00:12:33,067	S1:
This is.

00:12:36,701	S1:
Said that's that's Diane Luce. That's her mom. Around 1945.

00:12:46,567	S1:
Not quite as pretty. Grass wise as it is today. Okay. I'm going to spend a little bit of time. This is the tank battalions after action report for that particular day. It's it's important because it tells what happened on that particular day. And you can see at the end of the day's activities, Norman Carter and Kenneth Miller were reported as missing in action. So we, Brian and I looked at this paragraph as being the most critical and we figured, okay, but what does these numbers mean? I can see the the name Lawrenceburg. That's the name of a town near Woodland in Germany. But what are the VK numbers? So I reached out to a Facebook group for the his tank battalion and they sent me this. The Nord de girls war zone map zone is right up there. VK is right there at the intersection of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, and the coordinates are battle maps that the various commanders use to track their battalion's action. So if you look at 8624718,

00:14:22,801	S1:
let's go back. Let's look at 8234608283823

00:14:31,701	S1:
is 30% of the way to aid three.

00:14:37,000	S1:
471.

00:14:40,167	S1:
I did it again. Four. Six. Zero. Goes up this way. So you can see that red X marks the spot. So that's where the battle coordinates in Lawrenceburg was. This is the same coordinates in Herron nearby. And it turns out that the Army in their investigation focused on this paragraph. In a tank against tank battle, we lost one vehicle, and we believe that was my cousin's tank, but accounted for three of the enemy in the vicinity of 862471.

00:15:19,601	S1:
Oops. Did it again. That's here. Which if you can kind of picture a two, a three, eight, four, eight, five, eight, six and then 471 is four. So it's relative to this first map. It's probably up here somewhere. And that's the actual location. The Army believes the battle took place, that he he was killed. If you also notice the four wounded and missing Norman Carter and Ken Miller were missing. Robert Schneider and William Piatt were wounded. Turns out all four of them when they were in the same tank. But remember Robert Schneider's name lit for later on. So there's the. And these maps were all provided to me by a retired sergeant major from the German Army, Frank Cruijff from Aachen, Germany, who I met on the Facebook group, and he was our tour guide going throughout Germany.

00:16:30,701	S1:
He sent me these maps. That's that same battle map location. This is the same location. And you see all these blue squares? Those were bunkers in battle emplacements. Gun emplacements. I don't really know what the path of the tank was, but up in this area here it's referred to as bloody iceberg. And you'll see why.

00:17:01,801	S1:
And this was again Frank. Quiet. Put this together for me. And they were he was able to translate these VK coordinates into actual GPS longitude and latitude coordinates in Worsley. Brian and I walked up this road and into this field. Okay. Reading mass soldiers. Private Roy Sherrard, it was with the 101st airborne. He was killed in action in Normandy on D-Day. Gunshot wound to the neck. We're not sure whether he ever really reached the ground or not. We don't know. And he's buried at the Normandy American Cemetery. Second Lieutenant Ken Combs was a pilot co-pilot in a particular plane. They were on a battle mission to bomb Cologne, Germany, and en route from England to Germany. He was reported missing when his plane collided with a friendly plane evading fighters. He's named on the wall of the missing in the Netherlands. PFC John Finn was killed in action in France on November 26th. He's buried in the Lorraine American Cemetery and Sergeant Frank young. He was killed in in November. Also in in France. Excuse me in September. And he's buried at the Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint of Old France. And as I said, Autumn Hendrickson provided all this research and information to me. This is Private Roy Sherrod. Under the first airborne, you can he can see he had his trousers, blouse over his boots, boots. So he he was a bona fide paratrooper. There's Ken Combs, co-pilot that was killed, PFC John Flynn Finn and Sergeant Frank young. See, the older the the older the individuals, the harder it is to find pictures of them.

00:19:11,767	S1:
Okay. Hamilton, mass. General George Patton most everybody knows a lot of Peyton story. He was the commander of the American task force in North Africa, commander of the US seventh Army, landing in Sicily and the capture of Palermo and Messina. Then he was the legendary commander of the US Third Army, which dashed across France and broke the Nazi siege of Bastogne during the battle of the bulge. And then after that, he crossed the Rhine to enter Germany. There are stone pillars throughout Europe, and you'll see some of them in the pictures that I have. Patrick tracing his path all the way from Utah Beach in Normandy to, um, to Germany. Peyton's prayer. Well, Peyton is a great movie. I don't know if you've all seen it, but it's quite accurate. In all honesty, it takes the viewer from North Africa to Sicily and the Third Armies dash across Europe. Patton's prayer is another book here which takes the reader from The battle of the bulge all the way through the end of the war. And his and his wife, Beatrice. His final days. It's an amazing book. I've read it a couple of times, but obviously most people in this room know about the Patent Homestead and patent Park here in in the town of Hamilton and the commemorative commemorative stone pillars out in front of Patton Park. But what you may not know. Did you know George Patton was a participant in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm with Jim Thorpe, and he finished fifth out of 42 in the modern pentathlon? I didn't know that. Did you also know he fought in World War One? Pioneering modern tank warfare. Put modern in quotes for that. It was It's quite a guy. Quite a guy. And that book is amazing. Not only talks about him, but his wife Beatrice, and what she went through, especially in his final days. Private Sidney Meyer not many people know his story. His father, Saul and his mother, Mary. And they lived here in Hamilton. Their last known address in Hamilton, I believe, was three Arthur Ave. He was with the 334th Infantry Regiment. He was wounded in Kumaran, Germany, in November of 44. So the allies were just going across the border into Germany. Penetrating wound to the right. To his right chest. And he died in Holland two days later. He was 19 years old. I asked for the the army, for his IDF. I received it within a month. It was amazing. I couldn't believe it. I met his Dutch doctor, Miss Yvonne Rivers of Heerlen, Netherlands. She lives about six kilometers from the town in which he died in Holland.

00:22:39,267	S1:
Sidney's brother, Edward's granddaughter Rachel Meyer, lives in Ipswich. She was going to try and come today, but she was sick so she couldn't make it. She came to the last one. The last time I presented this, oops, did it again. There's George. Many don't know the circumstances behind his death. He was actually killed in a car accident. He was severely injured in a car accident in Mannheim, Germany on December 9th. He was going on a hunting trip and he was killed. He was in the car. He became paralyzed in a car accident, and nobody else in the car was hurt or even hurt, and he broke his neck. He was scheduled to return home the very next day. He died in Heidelberg, Germany, a little bit south and east of Mannheim. And these are the stone pillars outside Patton Park. The entrance to Patent Park, in recognition of general patent and as valiant Third Army. There's Sidney Meyer. That's the only known picture of him. Young looking guy. That's his sister Betty, visiting Sidney's grave in the Netherlands. And that's his Dutch adopter, Yvonne Rovers of Heron. This is that location today. There's Cutler School in the background. That's the same location that he's standing in right here.

00:24:19,300	S1:
You probably all seen many of you have seen this memorial at Hamilton Town Hall. Here's the soldiers we visited. Obviously, George Patton and Sidney Myer, many other soldiers. I tried to find them, but it kind of leads to an interesting fact that about 30% of those soldiers killed in Europe remained in Europe. The remaining 70% that remains were shipped home to their family. So if they're not buried in an American Battle Monuments Commission cemetery, we couldn't find them there, scattered throughout the country. But one soldier, he's he's on the wall of the missing. He was in the Navy Manila American Cemetery. And there's another interesting soldier, Albert Oser. He was in the US. He was in the Army Air Corps. He's on the wall of the missing and the Cambridge American Cemetery. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was a left waist gunner on a B-24 Liberator and it was lost at sea in the North Sea. All 11 crewmen were lost and he had. He has a memorial on Highland Ave in the Hamilton Cemetery. They were on a battle mission. They were returning from bombing Romanian oil fields when the plane went down. So it wasn't like we didn't try to find these folks, but we just couldn't find them. Okay, so now we had those seven soldiers we wanted to try and honor. So we wanted to trip plan. So we used an online pin maps tool this guy over here helped find, and we laid out a driving tour between clusters of various World War Two sites we hope to visit, And we use Google Maps for distance and travel time, and figured out where can we reasonably visit in a two week time frame. We decided to meet in Paris. He lived in Vienna hour and a half flight. I lived obviously here overnight flight to get there, and basically we followed the Band of Brothers Easy Company's path through Europe from Normandy to the Eagle's Nest. As it says on the Band of Brothers book, There's Our Path Paris to Normandy, to Dunkirk, to the Netherlands, in Germany, South to Bastogne. Luxembourg. Strasbourg. Munich.

00:27:09,100	S1:
Bavaria. And then back to Vienna. And here's how we wee wee laid it out day by day, by day wise.

00:27:20,868	S1:
Okay. Day zero for me was Reykjavik, Iceland. And that's the only site in Iceland I saw because I got there like 1:00 in the morning. So that's the only site I saw.

00:27:40,467	S1:
Day one in Paris, France. There was the view from our the breakfast view from the Hyatt Regency in Paris, obviously the Eiffel Tower and the arc de Triomphe. There's the arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées going through it. Present day. And there it is, circa 1944, during the liberation.

00:28:05,000	S1:
We went and visited plus de la Concorde. It's a famous revolution. It used to be the Plaza de la Revolucion and a lot of during the French Revolution, it was the site of the execution of various royals in the French government, and it also has this interesting Egyptian obelisk shipped to built in 1300 BC and shipped in from the from Egypt to to France.

00:28:34,868	S1:
Is the Tuileries Park outside their parliament building. There's a monument or a memorial to Henry John Pillow, who was executed by the Gestapo on the streets in France because he refused to submit to a search. So they just shot him right there.

00:28:57,567	S1:
This is the Sen River and the Eiffel Tower, and you can see the bridges across the Sen are pieces of artwork. They're amazing. And one of the probably There's not too much good you can say about German commanders, but Hitler ordered his commanders to destroy London and all the bridges across. Excuse me. Destroy Paris and all the bridges across the River Seine. And they refused to do it. One of the few decent things they did, obviously. End of the first day we had wine tasting in Paris. Paris. And that was our host.

00:29:40,701	S1:
Day. Two more in Paris. We went to the Notre Dame Cathedral. You probably all heard about the fire that happened in April, on Tax Day in 2019. And when we were there, we couldn't go in it, but we could stand outside it. And these were photos of the cleanup effort that was going on. The bells rang for the first time in November of 2024, and the grand reopening was December, about a year ago.

00:30:11,200	S1:
There's the Eiffel Tower up close. The Palace of Justice. And there's a poignant bridge across the Sen. Another one that was going to be destroyed if Hitler had his way. Built in 1578.

00:30:26,968	S1:
This picture is this picture. And there it is, circa 1945.

00:30:34,167	S2:
Well.

00:30:35,567	S1:
I think we'd better look it up.

00:30:39,767	S1:
We went to the Louvre. Um, very interesting place. We did not have time to go in it, but we went to the courtyard here. And you see this pyramid? Everybody kind of wonders why. What is that? It's just a covering to escalators that go down below the plaza, because that's where a lot of the exhibits are. Below the plaza, underneath the underground.

00:31:03,801	S3:
That's also how they.

00:31:05,167	S1:
What's that?

00:31:05,801	S3:
That's also how they got.

00:31:07,000	S1:
Yeah, Well, the break in happened right behind here in Bristol. The sand River is over here. They brought a truck in and put a ladder up. How they did this without being spotted. Somebody should be fired. A lot of somebodies.

00:31:27,267	S1:
But it was interesting to walk around there from there. Day three was traveling from Paris to Bio, which is right above where the number four is their bio bio in Normandy, France. This is Russell Marlowe in bio. This rather unique home. There it is. When we visited. And there it was in 1944, with Americans coming up rue Saint Malo. We walked down that street, kept going, and we came across the Notre Dame Cathedral of Buyeo, which was built in 1047, an amazing architectural wonder and the flags of all the liberating army Allied armies are to this day fly around the cathedral. There is the Cathedral of Bio. In 1944,

00:32:29,100	S1:
the town of bio was liberated by the by the British, but it sustained very little damage because you can see how narrow the streets are. Neither the Americans or the Germans wanted to expose their tanks there because they couldn't turn around. They couldn't do anything about it if they were in there. So they bypassed it and went around by you. If you're ever going to go to Normandy, that's the place to stay in. Bio.

00:32:58,400	S1:
This is inside the cathedral and we saw these two rather ornate plaques. One was for World War One, citing over a million British casualties, and then when the one right below it for World War two. From there we kept walking up Rue Saint Malo and we came to the Battle of Normandy. Museum in bio. You'll see this in a number of occasions in their museums. They dress mannequins up in realistic, uh, World War two. Uh, I won't say costumes, but uniforms

00:33:39,100	S1:
from. We kept walking and we came across the bio bio war cemetery, and it's mostly British soldiers here. No Americans. Rather interesting grave here of two unknown soldiers who couldn't be separated. So they were buried together.

00:34:00,067	S1:
No American scene. But this is the first place, I noticed the precision with which the graves are laid out. We signed the visitor registry, and then we headed back past the cathedral. And just at sunset and the the sunset on the cathedral was just amazing. And if you're in Normandy, where are you going? To have dinner. La Normandie. That's where we had dinner. And I began writing in my journal, which is right here. That that night.

00:34:39,868	S1:
Next day, day four, Normandy American Cemetery. You come into the parking lot. You walk down here. The visitor's center is on the right. You turn left and you walk down, and you parallel Omaha Beach. And the cemetery is on your left as you're walking down. Omaha Beach is on your right. Eight. There's the memorial.

00:35:07,167	S1:
And looking from the memorial out to the graves, that's what you see. And one thing that we noticed was the weather changed minute to minute. It was unbelievable how fast the weather changed. See how blue the sky was? Well, before I show you the the next, the next one, here's Roy Sherrard, the paratroopers grave in Normandy, killed on November 6th. Excuse me. Uh, June 6th, 1944. And he's real close to the memorial itself. And these are the signs we put on each soldier's grave that we visited. The people of your hometown, remember? Know you're here. Remember your sacrifice. And eternally. Thank you.

00:35:55,400	S1:
You might say, how come you flying the flag backwards? Well. Not really. look at the way the, the, the American flag was blowing because the wind. And we also noticed I broke the, the the the stanchion on the flag because the ground is so well manicured, you couldn't I couldn't get it through the ground. So that's why it's crooked. Because it broke his noise grow that his grave is in. He's in plot A, which is right near the memorial is. But not an hour later. Plot B, which is right on this side. Over here. Look how cloudy it got. And then Omaha Beach is down here.

00:36:44,000	S1:
This was the first time we cried. And I think because we've got the the Hamilton there playing the Star-Spangled banner and taps here. And we were out amongst the graves when we first heard that and we started to cry. We couldn't believe it, especially when taps started play.

00:37:06,400	S1:
This is the chapel and the garden of the missing. And there's me walking around the garden of the missing as the roof of the chapel. And this is the cemetery. There's plot A right there. Plot A, plot B, plot C, plot D almost 10,000 grades.

00:37:28,567	S1:
This is a map of American Battle Monuments Commission sites in Europe. The yellow is World War one. The blue is World War two. I couldn't believe how many World War one sites that we didn't get to visit.

00:37:47,767	S1:
At the edge of the cemetery is a time capsule to be opened. It was a put put there on the 25th anniversary of D-Day is to be opened in 2044.

00:38:03,200	S1:
The interesting to see what the the writers and reporters who were actually on the landing put in that time capsule.

00:38:13,701	S1:
That night we went back to our our hotel room in bio, and we watch Band of Brothers from Normandy to the Eagle's Nest. And I remembered a quote that Dick winters said that night. I took time to thank God for seeing me through the day of days, and prayed I would make it through D plus one. And if somehow I managed to get home again, I promise God and myself I would find a quiet piece of land someplace and spend the rest of my life in peace. He did in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

00:38:48,100	S1:
If you've ever seen that series, it's hard to believe that man survived. It really is.

00:38:55,267	S1:
Then we went on a Battle of Normandy tours on day five. This is Omaha Beach, looking east towards the British landing zones and Pegasus Bridge and Carn. This is looking west towards the point up to Hawke, Utah Beach and the Cherbourg peninsula.

00:39:18,567	S1:
This is the landing site of the US First Army. Notice how high the ground is inland off the beach. This is what they saw. This is what we saw. Quite a difference.

00:39:32,767	S1:
Again, the same thing.

00:39:36,567	S1:
My son Brian did a post because of a quote our guide had had told us about. Huh? There was a survivor of the Omaha Beach landing, a, Um, I believe third wave survivor who was sitting on the beach and in his wheelchair and these family was sitting on the beach. It's a public beach. You can go there like any other beach. And the kids were running around and singing and laughing, and and he started crying. And the parents came up to him and said, oh, we're so sorry. We'll hush them up. And he said, and this is a story that the French tell. It's not just me. Um, he said, no, you don't understand. I'm crying because they have the freedom to do that. And I think about the price my buddies.

00:40:36,167	S2:
Paid.

00:40:36,767	S1:
And it was worth it.

00:40:39,367	S2:
He.

00:40:42,367	S1:
That's looking out to see.

00:40:47,667	S1:
It's amazing what relics and stories that stretch of land or ends in ocean. There's Brian, he said. I'd have to walk this beach.

00:40:59,367	S1:
Then we went up to Punta Hawk, and this is the site of the famous, uh, scaling of the cliffs by rudders. Rangers, look what they had to go up. And all the wild Germans are up here shooting down at them. How they did it, I don't know, but their mission was to take out the guns that were up there. But when they got there, they were gone. There were no guns. So they went up there for apparently nothing.

00:41:29,167	S1:
And there's the memorial, uh, for the Rangers.

00:41:34,601	S1:
Your Todd Beach is down this way. Omaha Beach is up this way. Just by chance, as we're coming off of Puente Hawke, we ran into an Omaha Beach second Wave veteran returning. He was 98 years old, and he was returning 78 years later for the very first time. We left him alone, but I just wanted his picture, that's all. PFC Chester Sloane, then we went to San Muralis. I don't know anybody has seen the the movie The Longest Day, one of the most accurate all around movies of the D-Day. D-Day was referred to by the Germans as the longest day. And in San Mary, this is the battle of the church. And one of the soldiers, one of the paratroopers, got hung up. His name was Private John Steele. He got hung up on the spire of the church, and the Germans were shooting up at him, and he was hanging there by his parachute. And that's depicted in The Longest Day played. He's played by Red buttons in that movie.

00:42:48,100	S1:
There's the church right there, and there's a memorial to the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The 101st airborne were were charged with clearing inland after Utah Beach. 82nd airborne was charged with taking this town of Saint Marys. That's inside the church. And you notice the the stained glass windows throughout. Churches all throughout Normandy. They're all paratroopers.

00:43:22,467	S1:
This is the airborne Museum dedicated to the 101st and the 82nd airborne. And it's on the site. If you watch The Longest Day, you see the parachute chute. It's coming down. And just by chance, the a barn was on fire in the town. And many, many, many paratroopers couldn't avoid it and landed in the fire.

00:43:46,801	S2:
Of the barn.

00:43:47,868	S1:
And on that site of that burning barn, they built the museum again. The mannequins depicting various scenes. There's the C-47 troop transport exhibit.

00:44:04,801	S1:
And the glider exhibit. The gliders were made of, like, half inch plywood. Very, very thin. How they survived, I have no idea.

00:44:18,701	S1:
Then we went to Utah Beach. Those mile markers I told you about this kilometer zero zero where Patton came ashore at Utah Beach. And the landing craft were built by a company owned by a man and a gentleman by the name of Higgins. And they were built in New Orleans. And the Higgins boat memorial is right on Utah Beach. I can't confirm it, but I think that's why the World War II Museum is.

00:44:48,367	S2:
In New Orleans because.

00:44:50,167	S1:
Of his contributions.

00:44:54,267	S1:
There's a panorama of Utah Beach, and I've presented out at the American Heritage Museum. And I had a World War Two veteran sitting in a wheelchair at the back listening to me, private, uh, Pat Waller from Drake at mass. And when I put this slide up, he struggled to stand, and he said, I was there. That's where I landed.

00:45:22,567	S2:
I can't believe.

00:45:23,901	S1:
He's since passed.

00:45:27,901	S1:
This is another story most people don't know. Anglo village plan US medics hold up in this church. Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore, they were with the 101st airborne and they provided life saving treatment. Between 80 and 100 American soldiers, German soldiers and local civilians, including children in this church.

00:45:56,200	S1:
That's inside the church. And the. That's the guy. Whoops. That's the guide there that took us around and told us these stories. See this broken floor tile? The shell came through the roof of the church and hit the floor tile, but it was a dud. And so nobody was killed. And so they honor that. And they they believed there was a reason that that happened.

00:46:27,868	S1:
Again. Stained glass windows with paratroopers. Robert Wright's ashes are right out back of the church. And they honor they honor him and and Kenneth Moore. Okay. From there, we headed from bio to Dunkirk. Now, before we did, we hit some of the other landing beaches. The Juno Beach, which was the landing site of the Canadians and the British.

00:46:59,100	S1:
There's Juno Beach,

00:47:02,367	S1:
then Sword Beach, landing site of the British. And then got to Pegasus Bridge. And if you watched the the movie The Longest Day, the the British troops that landed on Sword Beach were charged with heading east and relieving the the troops that took Pegasus Bridge.

00:47:27,567	S1:
There's the gliders. They all came in on gliders. I call it the the glider landing zone. Our guide said no. It was a glider crash zone. They didn't land. They crashed there. And that's where it was on the other side of this bridge. And it was actually the first Allied victory on D-Day.

00:47:49,167	S1:
And this is the far side glider landing site Memorial.

00:47:55,000	S1:
And on that same side is the Pegasus Bridge Memorial and Museum. The Horsa gliders that brought the troops in. And there's an interesting cafe, if you look.

00:48:12,167	S1:
Right there you can see this cafe. It's called the Pegasus Bridge Cafe. Go figure. Well, in the movie, the longest day in the very beginning, this, this this pretty young French woman riding her bike over a bridge. And in the background, you can see the Pegasus Bridge Cafe. It was there then. That's the inside of it. Also, it's a memorabilia. And that's the outside. And that's where Brian and I had had lunch at that table. Then we made it up to Dunkirk Evacuation Beach, which was kind of an innocuous beach. They don't have much in the way of memorials, but between May 26th and June 4th, 338,000 Allied troops were evacuated. And they would probably have heard about the movie Dunkirk or what happened there. But a flotilla of military vessels and people's own yachts and boats evacuated these people. They hoped originally to get 30,000 people off the beach, but they got three, almost 350,000 off the beach. The fate of Paris and France followed later in June 1940.

00:49:35,200	S1:
There's the famous lighthouse. And if you watch the movie Dunkirk, they're all pulling up to that, that pier and loading troops on to the boats.

00:49:50,667	S1:
Okay. Day seven. Now we're going to head from Dunkirk, cut across Belgium to get to the Netherlands Netherlands American cemetery. This is walking into the cemetery. This is the walls of the missing. And this statue. Here is the watching guard of all these names. Of all the missing is called the sad waiting Mother Memorial.

00:50:24,868	S1:
Sad waiting mother memorial. This is the second a BMC cemetery we visited, and we found my cousin Kenneth's name on the wall of the missing seven 43rd Tank Battalion. And on October 18th of this year, we honored the 8080 first anniversary of his being killed in action. And we put that sign by his name and that's his Dutch adopt her.

00:50:53,167	S1:
Every May. And she does it every June, his birthday, every May, his the the remembrance days in every October when he anniversary when he was killed.

00:51:09,467	S1:
That's her oldest boy.

00:51:13,901	S1:
And again, if you notice on the wall of the missing these little rosettes, they put, if they find the remains of a soldier who's named on the wall of the missing, they don't scratch his name off. They put a little rosette, indicating that his remains have been recovered and identified.

00:51:36,868	S1:
If you remember the pilot from reading that was missing in action after bombing run to Cologne. Ken Karnes. He's named on the wall of the missing. Again, this is a view of the the the area where the missing wall of the missing is. It's alphabetical from A to Z. So Ken Combs is on this side. Ken Miller is on the site.

00:52:05,801	S1:
This is looking from the chapel. The chapel is in that vertical building right there, looking from there. Our back is where you see the graves. And there's Sidney Myers grave. And I put there the people of Hamilton, mass. Know you're here. And remember your sacrifice. What I hope to do, and I hope to talk to Rachel about doing as I would like. His father is buried in Hamilton Cemetery, near the back, near the flagpole. And I've asked the people of the cemetery if it's okay. I want to put a picture of his son's grave in the Netherlands on a like a stanchion right beside his dad's grave. And they told me. Sure. So I got to ask permission of the family to do that.

00:53:03,000	S1:
This is the chapel. And I remember this because it started to absolutely pour when we got in. We went in there mainly stayed right from there. We went to the visitor center. A new visitor center has now been opened and it had includes a museum. These are the six Medal of Honor winners that are buried at the cemetery. And we signed the visitor's register.

00:53:31,801	S1:
He cleared up rapidly again, and you see all the crosses and stars of David, and they all face home. They all face west. They don't face the American flag. They don't face the chapel. They face home, which I found rather choke up, you know, choking. Then we went from there to the village of Mark Groton, a little quaint Dutch village.

00:54:02,267	S1:
And crossed into Germany. Now the the distance between bath, Groton and Germany is only about five miles. Then you can travel that in a heartbeat. And it's like going from New Hampshire into Massachusetts. Easy. And I saw this sign again, and Lawrenceburg and I had to take a picture of it because that was what was on the after action report. The town is real. I'm here. I'm actually here.

00:54:34,400	S1:
Okay, now we're in Aachen, Germany and heading to Wergeland, which is this right hand set of, uh, pin marks in Aachen city. Our guide again, Frank Kuja, took us to the site of the German surrender of the city. Hitler had ordered. This city will not fall. We demand you fight to the last man. They surrendered. And that's the same window. This is Saint Sebastian's church in Wergeland. And there's my son and I outside that church when we visited. Look at the battle damage and just remember that church picture. Picture another picture in Aachen city. Our guide and this famous railway station and a Sherman tank coming through it.

00:55:36,300	S4:
I'm sorry to just see what you got coming out, but.

00:55:43,000	S1:
Yeah. Yep.

00:55:48,300	S1:
This is the the the map showing Lawrenceburg, which was the one of the paragraphs. And Herren, those coordinates that I showed you. There's Herron today. We went to those coordinates. It happens to be a prison recreation yard. So we couldn't go on there. We chose not to go on it. Lawrenceburg is just an apartment complex. Then we went to where we believe one of the two sites that the tank on tank battle actually took place. And I had to take a video of it. And I'm sorry the sound isn't working. Must be because of the mic. But the guy took us there and we walked. This is that tidal Thalassa access way. And this is us walking up that that access way. And there's the field off to the right. There's a bloody, ravenous bird where we believe all the the German artillery and firing was coming from bloody Babelsberg.

00:56:57,701	S1:
And when we, when we got there, he said stand here by our guide and he said, pull out your iPhone and they have the coordinates. And it exactly matches where we were, and it matches the translation between the VK coordinates that I showed you. And so we were standing right where at least the commander thought the action was happening.

00:57:22,367	S1:
Then it was on to Belgium again, only about eight miles away, and we met in four fueron Lecomte, Belgium. Vincent Hagen in his museum. He's honoring the 30th Infantry Division, Old Hickory, and he told us the story of Old Hickory, the Infantry Division and the 743rd Tank Division. They were attached together and they bivouacked in his dad's field. The infantry stayed in the in the in his barn and the the tank soldiers camped underneath their tank.

00:58:08,901	S1:
And he has decided to put together a museum honoring his liberators, the seventh 30th Infantry Division and the seven 43rd. And again, the same mannequin motif is XK X is the Roman numeral for 30 30th Infantry Division. This is in his museum and he told me when I took pictures, he said, please tell your people back home, we're not glorifying that. If you look close and zoom in. This was taken down by Allied soldiers and then signed by all the Allied soldiers who actually liberated whatever village it was that that sign was flying in. So we're not honoring the flag. We're honoring the signatures. This is a very interesting, never opened letter. It was addressed to a soldier in the seven 43rd Tank Battalion, who was killed in action before he could open it. It was returned to his family, and the family donated it to Vincent to put it in a museum. And Vincent said it'll never be opened. They brought it out to his grave and put it right there.

00:59:25,367	S1:
Says Brian, walking throughout the museum. And this is interesting because it mentions a town called Magdeburg, Germany.

00:59:37,200	S1:
On April 13th, 1945. My cousin's tank battalion, the seven 43rd, rescued these people, being transferred from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany near the Elbe river, probably heading east to a. They were heading to an extermination camp like Auschwitz. There is a documentary documentary miniseries in preparation right now called A Train Near Magdeburg, and it highlights the seven 43rd Tank Battalion. And this picture has become world famous. Look at all the varying expressions on their faces, every imaginable horror. I don't know what's going on. Joy and fear. This is the same site today. The loot in Vincent's museum. He asked me to sign the flag, the American flag and his museum. And I did. Right there in honor of my. My cousin and the tank commander's son brought that flag out to the location of their last battle. And this is a picture of them out at that battle site. There's where I signed it. Right, that. Then it was on to the Henri Chapelle Cemetery in Liege, Belgium. This is the third cemetery we visited. Again, breathtaking. We the the amount of crosses and stars of David. I took a picture of this video. These are Belgian citizens going to visit their adopted soldier's grave here.

01:01:26,567	S1:
And the thing that was interesting about it was it was pouring that day and they walked out to visit him anyway. Amazing. All the graves perfectly aligned and all facing home. There's a view from the entranceway after it stopped raining. We could see this beautiful view of the Belgian countryside. Day nine. On to the Ardennes American Cemetery. And that's down here.

01:01:58,968	S1:
And this is largely. This is the fourth a BMC cemetery in Belgium that we visited. And you'll see a lot of unknowns and missing because it's largely an Air Force's cemetery. And most of the remains recovered were unidentifiable or just missing. There's a soldier right there. One of the few missing in action who won the Medal of Honor. So his sympathies in his engraving is in gold leaf.

01:02:34,300	S1:
Again, note the precision with which the graves are laid out. My son said to me, precision equals respect in the military. From there we went to Bastogne to the 101st Airborne Museum. There's general, a memorial to General Patton and General McAuliffe and assigned for designating best on you. This is the General Patton display. And Patton's Third Army famously broke the German siege of Bastogne. But the commander of that spearhead, fourth Armored Division, who worked for George Patton, was actually Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams, who became famous in Korea and Vietnam. He was the chief of staff of the Army in the Vietnam War, and the Abrams tank is named after him, and he was born in Springfield, mass.

01:03:40,200	S1:
This is in the 101st airborne. More and more of the same motif, or simulating, uh, uh, picture or scenes that went on in the battles. It's next. Again, it's not real, but it's pretty graphic as to what was going on in the aide tents.

01:03:59,100	S1:
This was out in the hallway. They had a paratrooper hanging right in the stairway.

01:04:08,567	S1:
This is the 101st Airborne Division. Dick Winters and Easy Company is listed right over here, and the commanders are up here. All these are various companies in the division. From there we went about another mile to the Bastogne War Museum. And in that war museum, it was rather amazing. They they had like a surround sound and light show showing you what it was like to be in the foxholes. And it just it just they said if you have sunglasses, put them on. So we sat there and watched that. Then behind that is a place called the Bois Woods in Bastogne. And that was fascinating because you could download it. If you scanned that icon there. You could download an app and walk throughout the woods in Bastogne, point your phone at a target on the on the on a tree, and you could see who actually occupied that foxhole. And you could see obviously it wasn't the real guys. It was in the band of brothers. But one of the characters or one of the soldiers was Smokey Gordon, and he was shot by a German sniper, but he was in that foxhole. Pretty amazing. And that's protected. They control who can get in there and who and who can't. This is Brian, and that's the augmented reality display showing soldiers in the particular foxhole that he's standing in.

01:05:48,267	S1:
These are visitors memorials. These are the words. And it looked it looked just like in the band of brothers. The way they showed, the way they depicted for you. This is the town of Fowey in the, um, one of the last episode of Breaking Point, episode of Band of Brothers Easy company charges the village of Fowey, which is occupied by Germans through these fields, and a memorable occurrence in that town was Lieutenant Spears. Mad dash he he ran through the German lines and then returned to easy Company. He was delivering a message to another company because their radios were out, and he did that by foot. Then he came back and I think I'll read Berg.

01:06:41,767	S4:
What's what's Mark?

01:06:43,868	S1:
Mark Wahlberg in the series says. And the amazing thing is, after we got through it, he turned around and came back to us.

01:06:54,667	S1:
Going from Estonia, back from the from Fowey. Back into Estonia. Uh, this is easy. Company memorial. And if you're as addicted to the band of brothers as I am. Every one of those rooms come to come to life in the in the series.

01:07:16,100	S1:
This is downtown Bastogne. We tried to find a parking space here. We couldn't find one, so we had to park on a side street. And this is the general McAuliffe Memorial. Now, what a lot of people don't know is general McAuliffe was the assistant commanding commander of the 101st airborne. The commander was General Maxwell Taylor, and he had been called to Washington to consult with the president and other and other higher ups. That's how much of a surprise the battle of the bulge was. They had no idea that this was going to happen. So he was General Maxwell Taylor was in Washington when the battle of the bulge commenced. And there's another Patton, my kilometer marker. And so general McAuliffe was the one that issued the response to the German commander offer of surrender terms. And he just said the word nuts. And so therefore, where is the restaurant or nuts? So we had lunch there. This is inside the restaurant. All signed by survivors of the various battles in and around Bastogne. And then we had an airborne beer in a ceramic helmet cup. And there's a true story behind that. PFC Vincent Speranza, uh, was walking throughout an aid station in Bastogne, and one of the soldiers that he knew, he kneeled down to him, and he said, can you get me some beer. So he took his helmet off, went to get some beer and filled his helmet with it. And that's how he got beer. And so that's how the story is kept alive today in Bastogne. And unfortunately, Vincent passed away in 2023. Here's the wall of honor.

01:09:29,467	S1:
General Patton and Patton, the general beer. So of course we had to have one of those.

01:09:38,567	S1:
Yes, we were able to walk out of the.

01:09:40,667	S4:
Restaurant, but.

01:09:42,767	S1:
Then they also had a an actor's reunion. And we recall in, in the the episode called crossroads, I believe the 101st airborne is entering Bastogne, and second Lieutenant George Rice of the 10th armored. He's bringing much needed ammunition and he says a Panzer division is about to cut the road south. Looks like you guys are about to be surrounded. Captain winters responds. Were paratroopers. Lieutenant was supposed to be surrounded. And that's what this means right here.

01:10:20,501	S1:
Day ten. Now we're headed this direction and down into here the Luxembourg American Cemetery in Hamm, Luxembourg. The fifth cemetery that we visited.

01:10:35,000	S1:
Because while the names of the wall of the missing, sleeping and unknown graves. This is the the cemetery and two in the visitor's center, a Army combat nurse, second Lieutenant Nancy Leo, and a technical engineer, Oliver Tech. Five Oliver Morris are buried there.

01:11:00,567	S1:
She was a combat nurse and she was evacuating casualties and her plane was shot down. That's why she was killed.

01:11:17,267	S1:
The flag is at half staff. It just happened when we visited the cemetery. When we were in Dunkirk. Queen Elizabeth died. So that's why all the American flags at this particular time were at half staff. Many of the US soldiers killed in action during the battle of the bulge are buried here in Luxembourg. Because the battle of the bulge was a bulge in the line as the Germans were heading west and they were cut through Luxembourg and up and tried to encircle and did encircle Bastogne. And Bastogne was so critical because all the crossroads all met in Bastogne, and the only way to get armor Anywhere. It was on the roads because the fields were in December were a quagmire. They couldn't. They couldn't.

01:12:04,868	S4:
Vote.

01:12:07,467	S1:
There's General Patton's grave out front, still leading his men. That's not his original location. His wife, Beatrice, didn't like that he was out separated from his men. He was originally buried. I don't know exactly where, but near her. A soldier that was killed in his third army. But there was so much foot traffic out there to see General Patton's grave, they had to move him because it was destroying the grass.

01:12:39,501	S1:
And we put a sign from the Hamilton residence at General Patton's grave and you might say, California. Well, the state that's on the the these gravestones is the state you were. Entered the service in. So he was in.

01:12:56,567	S4:
He.

01:12:56,767	S1:
Was. entered the service in California.

01:13:02,267	S1:
The Lorraine American Cemetery was the sixth and final cemetery we visited in Saint of Old France. Again, another patent kilometer marker. That's the chapel.

01:13:19,567	S1:
The incredible C of this is the largest a BMC cemetery, grave wise in Europe, second second in the world only to Manila. And I was just blown away by the.

01:13:32,901	S4:
The.

01:13:33,968	S1:
The quantity of graves. This is looking back from here, back to the memorial, to the chapel. And down we went down this direction from this location to John Finn's PFC John Finn's grave from reading, and a little bit further to Sergeant Frank Young's grave, again from Redding. From there we went to Hagel and France. And if you're again, the Band of Brothers reference keeps cropping up. Haguenau is the site of the famous river crossing in the last patrol episode, and this is Liberation Boulevard and is the canal that the troops crossed. The Germans were on this side. The allies were on this side. And there the last patrol's mission was to capture German soldiers as as, you know, taken prisoner.

01:14:43,567	S1:
Private David Webster, you'll hear this in the episode. I wondered if people back home would ever know what it costs the soldiers to win this war. How could anyone know of the price paid by soldiers in terror, agony and bloodshed if they've never been to places like Normandy, Bastogne or Haguenau. At dinner that night, Brion said, well, we've been to all three of those, but nobody was shooting at us.

01:15:08,267	S1:
He was staying in Strasbourg, France. I found this interesting because that's the streetcar. Pretty modern looking the next day. Day 11 Dachau and Munich, Germany were heading from here.

01:15:27,200	S1:
Southeast to Munich area. First thing we did along about in this general area is cross the Rhine River. And you can see how wide it was. It was kind of low when we were there, but it was such a challenge for the allies to get across the Rhine, because it was a wide river and a fast moving river. And if you've ever heard of The Bridge at Remagen, it's the name of a bridge that the Germans tried to destroy. But that's how the allies got across the Rhine. And it was the last really significant natural barrier to the allies, to getting the Berlin.

01:16:10,000	S1:
Pass there we were on the Autobahn and we had a nice Audi SUV as a as a as a toy to drive. So we were pretty comfortable driving on the Audubon. Brian said to me, I'm not going any faster than 90. I don't care what they say. And we would be passed like we were standing still by Lamborghinis, Porsches, etc. that wasn't a problem. It was when the rickety box trucks going like this would pass you at night at 100, 120 miles an hour.

01:16:44,300	S1:
Here's how we knew we were entering Dachau. A rather nondescript sign that says Entering Dhaka, Brian said, wouldn't you have changed the name of your town by now?

01:16:57,667	S1:
This is the concentration camp memorial site. There's the railcar and loading platform and there's the entrance gate. This is the assembly area. These are all the barracks. They've torn down the original barracks and built one row of replacement barracks that you can kind of see what it was like for for the prisoners. Dhaka was liberated by the seventh Army on April 29th. Hitler committed suicide the very next day.

01:17:27,667	S4:
Yeah.

01:17:29,367	S1:
This was a maintenance building, but it's a museum now. Inside the museum. This blew me away because this doco and these are all the subsidiary camps just associated with Dachau. Just associated with Dachau. Now, they weren't all extermination camps. Dachau itself was a concentration camp, but it was a work camp. They killed people, clearly. But all these others. And in the band of brothers, the episode Why We Fight the towering concentration camp was the one they liberated. We couldn't get into that because it was closed to the public. This is what it was like in the barracks. And this memorial is trying to depict people trying to escape.

01:18:20,300	S4:
Okay.

01:18:21,601	S1:
This is multi-faith memorials. This is the Jewish memorial, the Catholic memorial and the Protestant memorial.

01:18:30,868	S1:
This speaks for itself. And this was our second cry. The guide walking through there said that as we were from where I was taking this picture, they had a wreath dedicated to nurses that were executed here. And.

01:18:53,767	S1:
Multiple. This is an ash grave of thousands. And there were 8 or 10 of these.

01:19:02,767	S1:
This is a memorial in, uh, in multiple languages. May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 and 45, because they resisted Nazi Nazism, helped to unite the living in defense of peace, peace and freedom and respect to their fellow men. Dachau was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazis in 1933.

01:19:27,200	S1:
Brian turned to me on the way as we were heading out and he said this. Now we see why there were so many white crosses, stars of Davids, and headstones throughout Europe. This had to stop. Then it was on to Munich and my birthday celebration at a beer garden in Munich.

01:19:50,267	S1:
My beer was a lot smaller than mine, so.

01:19:56,400	S1:
Day 12. We're almost there. Now we're down in this area. Here. This. Excuse me. These markers. We're still in Germany, but we're in Bavaria. Munich is technically in Bavaria, but we're heading to the Eagle's Nest. And you park in a parking lot down here and you take a windy road bus. It's very precarious. The bus gets really close to the edge as you're going up, but you go up to this parking lot here. That's this parking lot in the bus. And then you take a gold plated elevator up to the actual eagle's nest. This tunnel entrance was big enough, made big enough for Hitler's limousine. He was so paranoid about getting shot at that I want to follow the limousine, which is bulletproof, right in there.

01:20:57,167	S1:
In the Eagle's Nest, Kirstein House is the name of. Because it's Mount Célestine. They don't call it really the Eagle's Nest, except for tourists. Um, is little more than a snack bar now. And you can see restaurant, cafe and snack bar. Right. And it's not the highest place around. Look at all those peaks that you dwarf it. And of course, we had another German beer. This is further higher up. Uh, looking back at this is a very famous picture of the Eagle's Nest with the surrounding Burgess Garden. I mean, Eagle's Nest was the SS gift to to Hitler for his 50th birthday.

01:21:44,100	S1:
Kill Steinhaus. This is the sun terrace now. And this was Hitler in 1940 ish. Easy company was here on this terrace when the German Army surrendered. This is inside Eagle's Nest, Kirstein house. This stone fireplace was an Italian marble fireplace and was a gift from Benito Mussolini. We can't see it, so I wrote it over here. 1938 was when it was built.

01:22:25,367	S1:
We're heading down into Burke's Garden. That place I showed you from the. From the high up on the mountain. Captain Louis Nixon of the Easy Company said Burke's Garden, the one place you can't deny being a true Nazi. You had to be to live here. US soldiers kept on saying there's gingerbread houses everywhere.

01:22:50,767	S1:
Of course we had to have another beer at a beer garden. This young lady in traditional Bavarian dress waited on us.

01:23:00,868	S1:
Then it was on to Salzburg city, Austria. Sound of music fame in the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And we stay. Our Airbnb was named the Mozart. You might say. Why Salzburg city? Well, it's like New York City and the state of New York. Salzburg is a state. Salzburg city is New York city of of Austria. And bike riding is very popular that it was on to further east. So now we were here. Excuse me. South down to Zell Zella MC. This is the location of Easy Company's headquarters at the war's end. I found the mahogany Woodworth to be amazingly beautiful.

01:23:55,801	S1:
Looking out on Lake Zell. Again, more gingerbread houses everywhere and again. See how fast the the sun, the weather changes.

01:24:10,400	S1:
This is in Zell am see, our magnificent Airbnb. And I said, Brian, this was the entrance to our Airbnb. This is looking out. I said I could easily live here. This is spectacularly beautiful. We went to Capron just a couple miles away, and Capron was a world famous ski resort area, and it was Easy Company's R&R location at the war's end in Cape Town. If you remember in the very last episode of Band of Brothers, they're all playing baseball out in the baseball field that was in Captain Australia. Now we're heading east. The last two markers here are in Gorzow and Hallstatt, Austria. This is Lake Gaza. This is a walking path all the way around the lake. About five kilometers. We did walk that. Spectacularly beautiful. This is. The lake is formed from runoff from the Alps in, uh, from the winter snows. And you can see they're all practicing rock climbing. Up, up the the ledges

01:25:26,868	S1:
from where we entered. That's the original lodge. So we had to walk this way all the way back then. We're in Hallstatt. This is a very famous picture. You might have it on your screensavers on your Sony or Samsung TVs, because they use this view of Hallstatt. And we took a tramway up to a salt mine. And this is the view back down. And one might say, well, why a salt mine? Well, if you remember from the movie The Monuments Men in the book, that's where the Germans stored all the artwork was in a salt mine. Because salt is dry, you know, the atmosphere is dry and it will protect the artwork. Spectacular view down.

01:26:13,801	S1:
Brian walked out onto this. I said, I'm not walking out there. So he took this picture, I didn't.

01:26:22,868	S1:
This is the salt mine entrance, and this is a mummy that was unearthed in the 1800s.

01:26:32,167	S1:
This is back at Hallstatt now down, down at the village. And this is a memorial to our citizens lost in World War one and World War two. It's important to know they were not allied soldiers. As you can tell by the John symbol there, I mentioned that my wife and I were there in the winter, the previous winter, and that's the same view in the winter. And this is one of the best pictures I've ever taken in my life. And this is the picture that Brian refers to as God's paintings.

01:27:12,000	S1:
From there it was home to Vienna, Austria, and now we're heading due east almost to Vienna. It's about three hours drive. We went to an Oktoberfest at the American International School, where my grandkids were or were going to school. Another beer? Yes. In Vienna we went to a couple of various scenes. One is a memorial to the plague victims in the city center. And another and then a a horse drawn carriage throughout the city and the presidential palace.

01:27:55,100	S1:
We went to Schloss Schönbrunn, the Schönbrunn Palace of Austrian Emperor Charles the Fourth gifted this to his daughter Maria Theresa. In the 1700s it became the summer residence of the Habsburg rulers. This is a summer residence. It's not even their full time residence. Okay. And they wonder why they got overthrown. You know, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played for Maria Theresa here when he was six years old. But this is a view from up here looking back.

01:28:34,167	S1:
This is inside the foyer of the palace. They don't. Didn't allow pictures. I didn't know it till after I took my first picture. So from there we went very close. Back to Bryan's house, the village of Green Sing. And this was during Covid or shortly after Covid. And so the restaurants had outdoor seating, much like you'd see in some of the towns around here. And so they had what, every Sunday they would have wine walks throughout Vienna. So that's what we're doing here. And again, more citizens lost, but not allied soldiers. That's the end of the pictures, shall I say. So in retrospect, I like two quotes, one by General Colin Powell. The USA has sent many of its fine young men and women into peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return. And then, General Patton, let us not mourn that such men died, but rejoice that such men lived. These are the cemeteries we visited. Turn a number of casualties that are there. I don't know, it's probably 60,000. Maybe more than all graves. Headstones face west. Triple logistical heroes. Brian, obviously, who drove all close to 1800 miles. My wife and his wife, who let us do it because it wasn't a small thing, but some real things you don't think about was having a cell phone or international unlimited data plan. Was beyond comprehension helpful? We used Waze, The driving app. We were in Munich and we typed in Eagle's Nest. Okay. Drive one kilometre. This way. Take a right. And it took us right to the parking lot. It was amazing. When we were in any given city, we didn't know where there was a place to eat, where there was a grocery store or anything. So we pulled up Google Maps and we found supermarkets. And we found restaurants that way. When we went in into a restaurant, we used the camera on our phone and Google Translate, and the menu got translated from Italian or German or whatever to English. And then, as I said, I kept a journal. Are we going again? Yes.

01:31:17,467	S1:
Trip is in the planning stages now. We've got a several places. We. We must go. I want to research more soldiers, and I want to try and get to some real world one sights we and some more World War II. Uh, soldiers. I'm sure we, uh, pass by many World War Two soldiers that were from our various communities and World War one soldiers. I have a flowchart in itinerary. Anybody who would like anything. I don't have pride of ownership of anything. If you want it, let me know what you want. I can give it to you. The itinerary gives miles, uh, websites, costs, Airbnbs, hotels throughout, throughout Europe.

01:32:05,267	S1:
I referred to this previously as a finally, a mother's desperate plea. And I mentioned that the the families back home paid almost as much of a price as as did the soldiers. This is the sad waiting mother memorial. As you know, There's my cousin Ken Miller and his and his mom.

01:32:30,667	S1:
In the IDF. We. I got a copy of one of the letters she wrote to the army dated May 10th, 1945. I had a telegram saying my boy was missing in action on this date, and he was killed on this that same day. I have never received any news telling me where or when it happened or what happened, and I've received none of his personal effects. Will you kindly let me know if I can get any of them? This is in May of the following year. In the era of instant gratification that we live in today, that wouldn't fly. But that's what these these families had to deal with. Do you remember on the after action report, I mentioned a private Robert Schneider. He wrote a letter to my cousin's mother, Annie, Your son and I were together since Belgium and we were quite friendly. I joined the outfit a day before he did, and he and I went online together in the same tank.

01:33:34,868	S1:
I just highlighted a couple of areas here. Your son saved all our lives. When the lieutenant and the driver were out of the tank, the self-propelled, which was that Panzerfaust, almost like a bazooka, was firing on the tank. Your son got in the driver's seat and drove the tank to safety. They repeated reference to going up by a church. Your son killed a soldier who came out of a tank with the. With the 30 caliber machine gun. That's the machine gun that's down low in the tank. The 50 caliber. The bigger gun is the one that's up top. We went over by the church, and there on the opposite side was another Mark five tank. We never seen him in time. He put two armor piercing projectiles, and I remember a sound like a hammer hitting an anvil and a big red flash. I left the tank along with the gunner and the lieutenant. I never seen your son alive again after that. His. Then one of the more questions, you know, one of the dubious claims. His body was taken from the tank and given full military honor. Now the army told her he's missing in action. We don't know where he is. And his comrade, who was actually in the tank, said that. So what would be your response? Well, I mean, what's going on? Well, the Army did an investigation, and they basically said, we talked to the to the soldiers that were in the, in the survive that were in the tank. The tank commander, Lieutenant McWilliams, was killed about a month later. My cousin, who was the assistant driver and the driver were both killed that same day on October 18th and two guys really survived Piat and another gentleman, Schneider, brought Schneider.

01:35:33,200	S1:
Down here, it says, is the opinion of this office that the remains of your son were either destroyed in the tank or removed from the tank by enemy military, and disposed of in places unknown. Imagine getting that letter as a mom and look at the date.

01:35:52,100	S1:
With it. It's clear that since all efforts to find him have failed, we must declare his remains unrecoverable. And it is with sadness that your government must inform you there's no place to go to visit him. So she wrote back her last letter. This is March 1st. Quickly. She wrote back March 28th. eighth, basically saying, please don't give up looking for him. And when, when Brian and I saw that we got to go to this location, she passed away in 2000. So she lived basically 46 years after he got killed.

01:36:42,367	S1:
Challenged to us all learn, remember and tell their stories. These are but seven stories of lives given for all of us. Uh, so many crosses and stars of David in this presentation. They all gave their today for our tomorrows. They'll be forever young.

01:37:00,267	S1:
Brian. And my challenge was to make sure we did our best to tell people about the signs we placed on these graves, so that what we said was true. People know teach our young people and that both the military and civilian who went through generation who went through this saved Europe and the world. The people of the Netherlands surely do. And adopt a story of a fallen. Learn that story and share that story.

01:37:33,200	S1:
The Valhalla project puts it quite nicely. A hero never truly dies until the last time their name is spoken. Continue to honor them and they will live on forever. Never stop saying their names. Since we return to the USA, Private Miller's family has been honored. Honored with the Massachusetts Medal of Liberty. City of Medford is talking about a memorial. When that will happen. I don't exactly know. The US Army Casualty office and the DPA have classified his his search for his remains as an ongoing active pursuit. They repeatedly cite a location near a church, and we reached out to our contact in Germany and he said, well, back then the only church was this one that you guys visited. It's about a kilometer away. Now, we didn't know that when we were there, or we would have spent much more time in this particular location. Here's the field that we visited. Here's the location of the church about 1000m away.

01:38:39,701	S1:
His older brother, Miller's older brother, who's a member of the famed 30th Infantry Division. He fought in Normandy, the northern Apennines, Rhineland, Ardennes and Central Europe. He won the Bronze Star in the Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster. It's basically a second Bronze Star for combat action in Belgium, as well as a Purple Heart. His first Bronze Star was for action on October 18th in Belgium. The 2nd December 21st, and we believe this was during the battle of the bulge When they were liberating the village of Chaumont. He survived World War two.

01:39:20,367	S1:
And as I mentioned to some of you, I made this presentation to students at my high school alma mater and they were fascinated by some of the stories. Anybody who knows of anybody would like to hear about this. As I said, I've done this presentation a dozen more times. I'm more than willing to do it.

01:39:45,300	S1:
This is him, Private Miller, in a vintage Ford vehicle. And the picture at the Netherlands American Cemetery is a cropped version of this picture. The thing I wanted to point out here, here's his brother, and this is a newspaper article from the spring of 1945. Look at the date he won his first Silver Star. October 18th, the very same day his brother was killed. Oh, very same day.

01:40:24,801	S1:
Town of that his parents relocated to was Marlborough, mass. Their historical society prepared this memorial for him, and this is hanging in their town hall.

01:40:38,367	S1:
Our mission is to remember all of those in danger of being forgotten and to keep telling their stories. This was provided to me by our guide in Germany in memory of the crew of the M4 Sherman tank from company A, Kenneth Miller Norman Carter, the driver and assistant driver who were both killed that day. The commander was killed about a month later, and Piat and Schneider survived the war and lived to be in their 50s or later.

01:41:10,801	S5:
I used to go to the property several times a year going there. And, you know, it's it's stunning

01:41:23,267	S5:
when you come walking in and walking along by the monument in the water and then the flags and then off in the distance, the graves, and then to walk amongst them and look at the names and look where they came from.

01:41:53,267	S5:
And just think that their life was cut short. And they sacrifice for all of us. And then I think about how many of those young men and women.

01:42:11,000	S5:
I've never had a family member come to that grave and stand up for it.

01:42:19,767	S5:
So in a very small way, I try to be that person. Just be that person to stand in line, grave and acknowledge that person, that sacrifice that they made.

01:42:34,601	S5:
And it's just a very poignant place, very solemn place, but a very uplifting place to.

01:42:47,200	S5:
Know

01:42:49,667	S5:
you really get an understanding of the sacrifice. And looking at every one of those graves which represents someone who didn't come out.

01:43:06,601	S5:
Other indices. If there was one message for future generations, it would be never forget and remember them. Here's my dad to the left. And then just all the guys on my dad's trip. Don't worry John. We can learn so much from the men and women that serve not only World War Two, but in every war. And they all have a story to tell. And it's our responsibility to tell those stories, because people will not be forgotten as long as we keep talking about them.