Feldgrau.net

On February 19, 1944 the B-25 bombers of the 321st Bomb Group flew in support of the Anzio beachhead. The formation was attacked by a large group of enemy fighters, and one ship was shot down. Here is the description from the war diary: "Groups of 6/8 to 15/20 E/A attacked in pairs after leavin...

One hundred years ago the United States entered the great war that had been raging in Europe for four years. A young Jewish man in New York found himself called upon by his adopted country to fight and perhaps die for it. He had only been in the US for eight years after leaving Russia. All he had ev...

I would also like to propose the Memoirs of Werner Mork. He enlisted in 1939 and remained in the army until the end of the war. His descriptions of service in North Africa, Italy and the Russian front are very detailed and clear. He also takes time to discuss the social, political and philosophical ...

I have added new content to Werner Mork's account of life in Germany during the Weimar Republic and Hitler's Germany. Mr. Mork's detailed descriptions of the everyday life and the political milieu are honest and engaging. They help us understand how a sophisticated and civilized people could so easi...

Werner Mork has written extensively about his experiences as a soldier during the war, and many sections of his memoirs have been excerpted on the Deutsches Historisches Museum website here: http://www.dhm.de/cgi-bin/lemosuche (In German) However, he has also written about what it was like to grow u...

On August 23, 1944 the 340th Bombardment Group was given yet another bridge to bomb. For the 'Bridge Busters' of the 340th this was in many ways just another routine bombing raid. However, there were characteristics of the raid that were far from routine, in fact the origins of the order to go to th...

The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, but that did not mean that the average German soldier was out of danger. On the Eastern Front local partisan groups were marauding through the countryside looking to take final revenge on the German occupation forces. Capture by the Russians was also something...

Yes, of course, you are right, the Wiesenlager (Meadow Camps) were horrible. I am doing a translation of a German soldier's memoirs who was interrned at Horazdovice. That camp was not nearly on the scale of the ones at Remagen and elsewhere inside the German boarder. His narrative is very explicit i...

Very interesting!

Thank you for the additional information.

In the first days of the cease-fire in May of 1945 the Americans fenced in a large open field near the town of Horazdovice, Czechoslovakia to receive the thousands of German soldiers who were forced to surrender. The camp was run by elements of an American armor division who happened to be in the ar...

Does anyone have additional information or sources for the September 2, 1943 attack on the harbor at Catania, Sicily? Here is what I have so far: The 340th Bomb Group did not spend a great deal of time on Sicily. They arrived at Cosimo on August 2, 1943, then moved to Catania on August 27th. They we...

Werner Mork was deployed to eastern Germany in January of 1945. From his viewpoint we are able to watch as the army leaders became more and more desperate, more and more repressive and the orders became more and more divorced from reality. His unit was under continued pressure from the Russians and ...

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my posting. I was hoping that someone from the area around Steinau would come forward to assist. From postings on other Axis Forums I have learned that there was an Unteroffiziersschule in Jauer and that students there did take part in the fighting around ...

In January of 1945 the Russian army made a push for the Oder river, the border between Germany and Poland. The attack centered on the city of Steinau. When the first Russian tanks arrived on the bank of the river the Germans were caught completely off-guard. They considered Steinau to be a quiet sec...

Right. Although it is not specifically mentioned in my translation of Mork's narrative, his part in the withdrawal from Cassino ended on June 24, 1944 near Florence when he suffered another particularly intense attack of malaria. He was evacuated to Lake Garda. The Gothic Line, or Green Line, was be...