Clarence Williams 1945 Photo Album

January --- 1945 C.P.#2 or DBS near Marseilles, France. Temp was around zero with high winds. Used rocks to hold tent down.

A view of DBS - The "Hell Hole" - Not a tree in sight. Note tents as far as one can see.

Barron & Beaulieu doing laundry at CP#2

Volley ball at DBS in January 1945 - Kopf - Edstrom - Zimmerhakel - "?" - Burke & 1st Sgt Hall.

Jan - "45"- Irving Miller and Max Nussenblatt cutting wood at DBS. We had to walk one mile for the wood.

Freight Transportation at Aix-France.

Jan-'45' - Jones Shaving out of helmet in near zero weather at DBS.

Jan-"45" - George Laskos at sidewalk cafe in Aix, France.

Taxi service at Aix, France.

"Pappy" - Alton Bellflower and George Laskos at Sidewalk Cafe in Aix, France. Jan - "45"

My knees at the left - Norman Waples - "Pappy"- and George, having wine at cafe in Aix - France

Jones - Watson - Besdsa - and Mr. Tollefson at side walk cafe in Aix, France. Jan-"45".

Sol Karnovitz - Pappy and Laskos drinking wine at Aix-France. Jan-"45"

4 days and five nights on this train from Marseilles to Cirey-France-Jan-"45".

Wrecked German Equipment on French Railroads. Our planes had strafed the train.

Wrecked German equipment seen enroute from Marseilles to Cirey-France. What a trip - No water for washing and shaving and "K" rations for food

Karnovitz dismounting from french train after our arrival near Cirey, France.

German amunition destroyed near where train stopped

Norman Waples with Laskos policing the area in the background.

Feb-"45" Sawing wood at Cirey-France, Pappy, Tollefson, French Boy, Laskos, Guistolise.

"Gangsters"-Watson and Guistolise at Cirey-France.

Guistolise at Cirey-France. We celebrated here with GI & Juices.

"Red"-Jesse Drake with a little French Girl.

Glenn Stacy and Guisetolise with a French Girl at Cirey-France.

Watson and Drake with some French Kids.

"Pirates" - Laskos and Besosa at Cirey. Feb-"45"

I visted this exact spot in Nancy - France. Feb-"45" Was also here in Aug-"45"

Waples and Guistolise at Cirey-Feb-"45".

Guistolise and Laskos with a French Lad. - Cirey.

Watson and Drake with a Frenchman at Cirey.

Guistolise and Waples with French Boy.

Feb "45" A group of the boys at Oberhoff in Alsace.

Feb "45" One of our billets at Oberhoff. House & Barn.

1st Sgt Jack Bell in front of our C.P. at Oberhoff.

Our "sinze" sign at La Petite Pierre in Alsace

Cooper - Miller and Insull with an Alasatian home in the rear.

Lonnie Bothe & Tom Stuart in front of our aid station. La Petite Pierre.

Bruce Beaulieu at our station in Alsace.

Chow Line at Oberhoff location of our C.P.

Feb "45" - Front to rear - Dan Lupa, "Pappy" Harris, Irv Cooper, "Me" Wilbur Insull, Hulon Barron

A view from the rear window of our aid station.

In the Hardt Mts. The smooth surface is blue grass resembling a park.

In front of an Alsatian home - Harris, Insull, "Me" Barron, Cooper and Miller.

Our Aid Sation - A former telephone and telegraph office at La Petite Pierre. Left to right - Bothe, Insull, Cooper, Barron, Miller and Me.

March "45" - Werneckathal, France, Beittel. With German Rifle & "Smokey" Snover with an M1. We had "target" practice and threw hand grenades.

Werneckathal, France. Miller, "Me", Cooper & Insull. Here we went through the Maginot fortifications, Mar "45".

Ludwigswinkel, Ger. Our 1st station in Germany & start of the Siegfried Line. Mar "45".

A canal in Wertheim Germany

Some of our "Ack-Ack" guns near Wertheim Germany. Mar "45".

One of the bridges destroyed by the retreating Germans. Near Wertheim.

A street scene in Werthiem, Germany. Mar "45".

Personnel Headquarters 122nd medical battalion Wertheim, Germany.

"Pappy" Bellflower at Wertheim, Germany.

Waiting for a cold one at Wertheim. Drake, Jones and Watson.

The boys from Personnel at Wertheim, Ger. Front row - Left to Right - My old bridge partner - Tollefson, Gustolise, Laskos, Bellflower, Waples, Karnovitz, Drake - Rear- Stacy, Besosa, Watson & Jones.

Watson's elevator at Wertheim, with Tollefson, Jones and Drake.

Sol Karnovitz at Wertheim.

Unloading Beer from the Jeep at Wertheim - Jones, Guistolise and Stacy.

Werthiem Germany. Watson, Jones, Karnovitz unloading T.A.T. Boxes

One of our Billets at Untereisenheim, Ger with the Main River in the background. On the river was a barge loaded with champagne - over 2000 cases. We were here before & after taking Schweinfurt.

Once a beautiful city, now practically demolished. We were shelled where with 88's before crossing the river. Heaviest casualities of our regiment received here. One could travel entire distance across the city through underground passageways.

Glenn Stacy - Taken at Wertheim, Germany. Mar - "45"

Our Aid Station at Oberfurberg, Germany a few miles south of Nuernberg. Bld'g was previously a Children's Hosp. To the rear of the bld'g was an army obstacle course for a nearby German camp. Also in the mountain was an unfinished air raid shelter and close by in a workshop we located the plans for the shelter. Here we received one of our boys that had a grenade explode in his pocket.

"Me" repairing our radio aerial at our station in Furthnuernberg. Apr "45"

One of our billets at Oberfurberg. It was also a part of the Children's Hospital. Located in Bavaria the surrounding country is beautiful.

A view across the valley from Genderkingen, Germany. Note the large herd of sheep. We were waiting here for the engineers to put a bridge across the "beautiful" Blue Danube so as to enter Rains, Germany. Apr - "45".

An entire trainload, of 39 cars containing dead bodies at entrance to camp.

One of the cars containing bodies.

Another box car scene.

This man had apparently been shot when attempting to escape.

Same scene as above, taken by Irv Miller.

Another box car scene. Most of the prisoners were dressed in the striped blue and grey prison garb.

Another car load of bodies.

Dachau, Germany - (AP)- A new unmarked mass grave jammed with the skeletons of about 4,000 victims of the notorious Dachau concentration camp has been discovered here, it was announced today.

The burial pit was found by a mixed American-German commission investigating the descration of another burial ground by a building contractor.

Dr. Phillip Auerbach, Bavarian goverment member of the commission, said the grave was being sealed off by police and investigation would be conducted to determine why the grave was not marked.

The mayor of Dachau, Nikolaus Deichel, said the grave had been dug by Americans who first liberated the concentration camp in 1945.

Deichel said all the nazi victims found dead in the camp had been placed in the pit.

Auerbach said identification of the skeletons would be impossible.

Eariler this month, U.S. military goverment ordered excavation work stopped on a hill outside Dachau after an unmarked grave containing 100 pieces of human skeletons was found.

Mayor Deichel said there was "no connection" between the two graves.

American troops reached Dachau, infamous Nazi concentration camp on April 30, 1945. The following is a report on the grisly camp, monument to horror, as it appears today.

Dachau, Germany (AP)— Four years have passed since the infamy of Dachau Concentration Camp was avenged.

Four years have drifted over eerie Dachauer Moor, and passersby no longer glance fearfully at the gray stone walls, the ugly barracks buildings.

But horror is still the warder at Dachau.

The sprawling camp stands as a harsh and fantastic reminder of what has been—and could be again.

Fogs drift in from the moors and hang over the red brick crematory whose furances claimed the bodies of 238 thousand people. Inside it a sickly smell seeps from the walls. The steel doors of the gas chamber hangs open.

Only mists now visit the long rows of kennels where Naz handlers kept the snarlng, murderous camp watchdogs.

The pistol range, where guards used Dachau inmates as targets, bear a brief, explanatory sign. Near it a big stone cross lies as a marker for untold unidentified dead.

Hangman's Tree rises high, gnarled and sturdy. A heavy limb shows the scar where ropes bit deep above struggling bodies.

A large cement platform where pig-snouted german trucks disgored Dachau arrivals still displays old Nazi signs. One point to a low-ceilinged room and says, simply: "Showerbath."

The Nazis found that gas worked best on moist bodies. Only a few steps from the showerbath are vault-like gas chambers with their grisly skull-and-bones symbols on the doors.

By the thick, red brick furnaces with their metal litters, is an oddly fastidious Nazi sign.

"Keep clean," it said to the men who stoked bodies into the flames. "Keep clean. Do not forget to wash your hands."

In the basement of the crematory little red earthenware crocks stand in rows. Once these held ashes dragged from the crematory furnaces. The Nazi were neat and orderly in their murdering.

A former Wehrmacht solider walks slowly around the crematory grounds. Red spots appear in both cheeks as he looks at the buildings.

"Hitler," he mutters. "Hitler was a devil."

"I think," he says slowly,"that it is worse in Russia today than it was here. I think that."

It seems poor compensation, though, for the gas chambers, the barbed wire, the thumb screws and the furnaces. He curses his lips uneasily.

"Schrecklich," (horrible) he says[?] vacantly. "Schrecklich."

There is consolation in one memory, it is a sign that a Josef Zbazinski of Krakow, Poland penciled on a wall near a furnace a couple years ago. He wrote his name first, then drew in thick, black lines the six-pointed of David.

It was the quiet, victorious smile of a people who had outlasted the conqueror.

Our C.O. Capt Joseph A. O'Brien and Crown viewing bodies of dead S.S. Guards. Main stockade of the prison in the background. The Fence is electrictally controlled. The bld'g is a guard tower. One prisoner, a former Yugoslav bank vice-president stated he had served 8 years for listening to the B.B.C. newscasts.

One of the rooms in the crematory building.

Dead S.S Guards. Few were shot, most were beaten to death by rifle butts. Some were killed by released prisoners.

Hugh piles of clothing in the yard outside the crematory bld'g. Note the high stone wall surrounding the crematory.

Dachau, Germany (AP)—Nine years ago American troops uncovered the infamy of Dachau.

They marched through the gates of the Nazi horror camp under a brilliant April sun and liberated the miserable thousands who managed to escape the gas chambers and crematory.

The incredible story of the extermination camp shocked the conquering armies. It was hard to believe the narrow brick furnaces were stoked with human fuel; that the gas chambers snuffed out thousands of lives; that guards used inmates for target practice.

U.S. Military authorities decided to maintain Dachau as a shrine to the men and women who died there and as a reminder of Nazism's dreadful practice.

A monument was erected with the inscription: "In honor of the dead, as a warning to the living." Inside the crematory, wreaths and flowers serve as solemn memorials to its victims.

In one of the torture chambers escutcheons of countries whos nationals died in the ovens are attached to a brick wall. On the bottom row, second from the left, is the emblem of the United States.

Nearly a decade has passed since the first liberated inmate blinked in the sun, trying to realize fully the truth of freedom. During these years Dachau, now a settlement for refugees, has been high on the list of places to see in a countryside famed for its pastoral beauty.

No longer do Allied visitors see it, then glance uneasily at their German guide.

For Dachau has acheieved its goal.

The Allies have seen that, regardless of Dachau, there were German men of good will. They learned, gradually, that there were Germans who longed to know democracy, whose lives were dedicated to making sure another Dachau never again reared above the Bavarian moors.

The citizens of Dachau made an early start in helping to establish better relations with their conquerors. A German-American friendship society sprang up on the ground once heavy with the seeds of hosility and mistrust.

It was a slow growth. The shadow of Dachau stretched long over this land.

Finally a West German republic was born. A new capital rose at Bonn on the broad Rhine. Its leaders and their former enemies worked to bind themselves together in the interests of Europ free from fear. Plans for German troops, pledged to serve side by side with the Allied west in defense of freedom, were made.

It has been a slow journey since that April day in 1945.

But today the long restless air above this Nazi concentration camp is quiet.

One of the crematory ovens at Dachau concentration camp.

Dead bodies in a couple of the rooms at the crematory. We counted between six and seven hundred bodies in the bld'g awaiting cremating.

Close up of one of the piles of bodies

Our aid station at Eoling, Germany. A Bavarian farmhouse

German prisoners surrendering near Wasserburg, Ger.

I visted these tombs in Munich. Each tomb contains 8 bronze caskets holding the bodies of the 16 Hitler followers that were killed in his orginal march on Munich. The Bld'g in the center with the flag was the Brown House - Hitler's home now demolished.

More prisoners surrendering near Wasserburg. Note the tank on the front of the truck, it used wood for fuel.

A typical german street scene - the street goes through the tunnel - Gunzenhausen, Ger.

Our aid station at Freutsmoos, Germany. This was our location when the war in Europe ended.

Celebrating "VE" day with old Dobbin at Freutsmoos - Stuart, Edstrom, Soltys, Slvain.

Church services and prayer for the ending of war in Europe, May 8, 1945 - Freutsmoos, Germany.

Our station at Obing, Germany. Our first location after the war ended.

"Me" taken at Kirchbikel, Austria - May 45. Our station in the background. The owner also owned a winery.

These ladies are making wool thread from raw wool - all done by hand.

Bayrischell, Germany. A top the mountian was a observatory & hotel.

The "42nd" "Rainbow" division band serenading us at our station in Obing, Ger.

Me with a little native on the patio of our station at Bayrischzell, Ger.

Insull at our private swimming pool Bayrischzell - Ger.

A winter scene of the picturesque city of Bayrischzell.

One of the most beautiful places in the Bavarian Alps. Our home at Bayrischzell a winter resort town.

Across the valley taken from the patio in front of our station.

A summer view of our home & aid station. The building is constructs in a semi-circle, was formerly a resort hotel, and had every convenience.

Me at our swimming pool in Bayrischzell.

The "Sky Ride" at Innsbruck, Austria. Noted the cable car Trolley Tracks to the first landing.

Our 1st Sgt. Jack Bell - Bayrischzell, Germany.

Jones & Watson in front of 103rd Div. Rest center at 2nd landing. Their div. C.P. was 1st landing.

Watson and Jones skiing at the 2nd landing - Innsbruck.

Watson - from So. Carolina on skiis. Innsbruck.

The 2nd & 3rd landings of the "Sky Ride".

Brenner Pass - Looking into Austria from the Italian side. Hitler & Mussolinni held one of their famous meetings in the large building on the right.

"Me" at Brenner Pass on the Italian side.

The guard tower at the border taken from the Italian side. The railroads thru the pass were badly damaged by bombing.

Me at Brenner Pass in front of 6th U.S. Army Corps sign showing their battles.

Rear entrance to castle of Ludwig II Former King of Bavaria.

The boat that took us to the castle on the island into the Chiem Sea.

Outside view of the castle - only eight rooms were completed and furnished at the cost of over thirty million dollars. Draperies were trimmed with gold leaf.

A diagram of the Chiem Sea showing the island and the Bavarian Alps in the rear. The lake is not far from Munich.

Entrance Room - rear entrance.

Front entrance - Castle is at least one block long. Walls had beautiful oil paintings and beds were of solid gold. Bath was of solid marble about 25 feet in diameter.

Rear entrance to castle of King Ludwig II. Also view of courtyard.

Schwaz, Austria - About 15 miles from Innsbruck. We were here for almost a month - June "45". Had a large Bld'g previously a correction house for girls.

Our first personanel office at Kurfstien.

Kufstien, Austria - A beautiful city. I was here with personnel 1st part of July "45". The old castle grounds contained one of the largest outdoor pipe organs in Europe - could be heard six miles.

Our enlisted mens club at Kurstein - Jones & Dick Whalen at entrance.

The old fortress or castle at Salzburg, Austria. Built in 1077 by the monks and still in good condition. Stands on a solid rock ledge in the center of the city. Went all thru the castle in Oct. "45".

A view of the countryside above Salzburg taken from the castle grounds.

Me taken from the corner ledge of the castle grounds, note the city to the rear.

Taken inside the castle grounds, it still has the torture chamber above the dungeon.

Salzburg, Austria taken from the castle grounds. The Cathedral in the foreground had been bombed.

Cable car track leading up to the castle from Salzburg. Tank on car at top is filled with water to pull other car up.

Saturday morning wedding in Hallein, Austria. The carriage and horses are covered with flowers. Note the cement water tank in the center of the street.

Another view of taken from the castle grounds.

Bridge across the Salza River at Hallein, Austria.

Me taken on the highest tower of the castle. Oct, "45".

Taken from our C.P. window-Hallein. A view across the valley. Note snow.

Our aid station at Hallein, Austria. I left the company from this location Oct 20, 1945 to start my trek back to good old U.S.A.

Hallein - the home & grave of Franz Gruber composer of the Xmas carol - Silent Night, Holy Night.

Hallein - A view across the valley from our C.P.

A view of main street in Hallein showing our station at the end of the street.

Hallein, Austra - Church steeple collapsed - just from old age - Oct "45".

A view of the city and the Church. The marked portion is the part that collapsed.

Debris from the steeple filled and blocked the street.

Entrance to an undergound aircraft factory - note the tracks. At right P.O.W's removing a large lathe from the factory.

More of the debris - Franz Gruber's home in background.

Red Cross club at camp Pall Mall - Etreatat, France near Le Harve.

London, England. St Mary's Cathedral. To the front - a buzz bomb had demolished a bank.

The Seine River in Paris - was in Paris three times Aug, Sept, & Oct "45".

The Houses of Parliament, truly a beautiful building. A bobby standing in the foreground.

Arc De Triomphe in Paris - was here in Aug, Sept & Oct "45"

Famous Prison - old London tower where many have been beheaded & hanged.

Changing the King's Guard at Buckingham Palace. This ceremony takes place every morning when the King is at home - It lasts about 1 1/2 hours and includes a large military band playing almost constantly - also the Scottish group with ther bagpipes. At right is the old guard marching out the palace gates through St. James Park to their barracks.

A London streetscene with the double-decker bus on the left side of the street.

A shot of one of the polar bears taken at the London Zoo.

Street scene - Glasgow Scotland - Sept"45". Taken from our window, "charing cross Red Cross club."

Another view of Loch Lomond. It stretches for miles through the valleys.

Loch Lomond in Scotland. Wind was blowing strongly and lake was rough but very beautiful on this boat we covered many miles of the lake.

This scene taken from a top one of the islands. The small black dot in the lake was quite a large ship.

A summer home on one of the many islands in Lock Lomond.

Taken on the island. Heather - the Scot's national flower is plentiful on these islands.

Hitler's hideout at Berchtesgaden with his eagle's nest on top of the mountain.

Remnant of the French 1st army leaving the city of Berchtesgaden.

A view across the valley from Hitler's estate.

Bridge across river leading to Hitler's hideout. Guards were kept posted at gate at left end of bridge.

Hitler's home a Berchtesgaden - badly damaged by bombing.

Damaged buildings of Hitler's henchment at Berchtesgaden.

The Munich airdrome, one of Hitler's finest. The air ministry building was badly damaged by bombs and was gutted by fire.

The 2nd replacement depot at Namur, Begium. Nice buildings but otherwise a terrible place to stay.

Old monastery or castle at Namur, Belgium. Namur was not far from Liege or Bastogne. Most of the city was not badly damaged.

A funeral coach in front of a funeral parlor at Namur, Belguium. Stores in this town seemed well stocked.

A view across the river and barges on the river at Namur, Belgium.

The Astor Theatre, a quonset hut, at camp Top Hat - Antwerp Belgium. We lived in tents that covered as far as the eye could see.

The harbor at Antwerp, Belgium. We boarded our ship here Nov 11th, "45".

Taken in the middle of the Atlantic aboard the S.S. Barbara Freitchie by one of the crew members that I had taken care of in Sick Bay at the beginning of our trip. We were 17 days on the ship and the crossing was very rough. Landed at Boston 27 Nov. "45".