On April 12 we were in a town called Duderstadt. During the night the guards had disappeared from the barn and American tanks were in plain view. The Americans were eating white bread which Mem thought was cake. They had mail from home and were reading the letters. There was no opposition to them and outside of the few SS soldiers, we had not seen any German forces which could have opposed them.

Mem and I moved into a German home. There was a young woman with a baby and her mother. There were two Russian POWs living in the barn. Mem and I slept in a bed with sheets, we bathed, washed our clothes and thought we were in heaven. The young woman started to complain so Mem told her while we were there no one else would move in so we were protecting them. The woman was distraught as her husband was on the Eastern Front (Russia), so not much chance of him surviving. We found out there was a German Army storehouse a few kilometers away so we got a horse and wagon and sent the two Russians out to forage. They came back with cans of preserved meat and hardtack. We split this between the women and the Russians. An American officer came and asked us to move into a barn with the other liberated POWs while they were arranging transportation back to England. We politely declined and said we preferred the feather beds and that we had enough of sleeping in barns. The German soldiers were now POWs and the Americans had about fifty of them in a barn. Apparently they were getting no American rations because the German women were taking soup to them.

We were there for a few days, then we were taken by truck to Kassel and then flown to England. I went with the R.C.A.F. to Bournemouth and Mem went with the R.A.F. While in Bournemouth, I met up with my other best buddy, Johnny Kormylo, Johnny and I went to Southampton and all the girls were queuing-up (lining-up) for a movie. The girls were whistling and waving to us and inviting us over, but we knew all we could do was to wave back as neither of us was strong enough to enjoy female company.

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