Letters from George

In 1945 the war crossed into Germany, and so did George. The 49th Engineers fought across the Rhineland and the Cologne plain and helped close the Ruhr Pocket, much of it under VII Corps — which George names in a letter that February.

It was here, around the Rhineland fighting in the early spring of 1945, that George was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart (he mentions a Purple Heart and a ten-day rest in Belgium). His letters from Germany — roughly February to May 1945 — describe billets with a sleeping bag and a cot, a Red Cross unit with coffee and doughnuts and his first hot shower in months, batteries rigged for electric light, and at last V-E Day: writing the day after the war in Europe ended, thinking of home, FDR's death, and the uncertain question of the Pacific. By late 1945, with enough points to come home, he was on his way back.