Letter from Clarence Williams to Gretchen Williams, April 28, 1945

Well here is another week end and I am sincerely hoping we don’t spend many more in this part of the world. I have really been in the dumps the past few days for some reason, every thing seems disgusting to me. I hope if I had been here as long as some of the boys over here I would go completely nuts.

We keep moving so often anymore that we hardly know whether to take off our hat when we stop. Yesterday we moved twice and the other station once. This morning the other station moved ahead of us so of course we will be moving again today. We are now very much in the Southern part of Germany. I have never seen so much armor and equipment in my life as has rolled by us the past twenty four hours and is still moving in a solid line. The tanks shake the building we are in and of course the noise sounds like an earthquake so you can imagine how much sleep we got last night.

Honey the picture I sent you, rather the negative, was taken in Furth. If you look on a map you will see it is just on the outskirts of Nurnberg to the East. It had a population of around 80,000 but of course many of them had moved and before we arrived. It really took a beating and about half of the   heart of the city was in ruins. We are now much further South.

The weather has been very disagreeable both yesterday and today with rain intermittently and the air is rather chilly today.

In this home, we are presently staying in, are about fifty pictures of Nazi soldiers who have been killed in action with inscriptions below each picture. These people apparently feel it a great honor to die for Germany. In most every church yard is a large statue of a German soldier with a riffe or grenade in his hand. It is easy to see they are very militaristic and put that head of all else, even the church.

The boys are out in the kitchen now frying chicken. It may be a little tough but they boiled them for an hour or so first. The fellows have a new name for taking things like that now, it isn’t looting anymore but liberating. You can imagine how happy these chickens are to be liberated.

Well darling, guess this is all for now. Give my regards to the folks.