Photos: Allied drive into German town (Hüsten, Arnsberg)

Scans from original 35mm negatives.Nikon Super Coolscan 8000.

One of the prints that came with them had written the following:

"Town Square, Hüsten, Germany. We spent one night in the Hotel Union, a musty old bed. Our vehicles (A's) practically filled up the square"

Single photos:


















Mosaics:






Stunning.

Preserving the Past for the Future.

 

Interesting to speculate what unit this was, but it is likely after 8 May 1945. Ninth Army, XIX Corps, and 8th Armored Division bypassed, driving west to east on t he north side of the Ruhr. I do not believe there was any fighting in this area.

 

RichTO90,

This is the only photo with a near-decipherable vehicle number.

Full resolution link of 3rd photo.

Hopefully our human mind can help us here, it is quite good in ignoring noise. But is our natural noise-reduction reliable enough?

Regards,
Niels

 

Unfortunately the vehicle serial number won't help much, it would require bumper codes to determine a unit.

 

One thing that jumps out at me is that none of those soldiers are carrying rifles. So yes, this is after the surrender. Allied troops are moving around freely to occupy this zone or that.

.

 

Husten was a lucky town then! No sign of fighting and no damage. Civilians getting on with life. It was a lot different in Hamburg, Berlin and other cities. Anyone seen the movie "Aftermath" yet?

 

Sometimes all things just happen at the right moment...

 

....musty old bed must've been nice after not having one for a long time ....I remember sleeping on concrete with a thin piece of foam rubber and thought that was ''very comfortable''--since we had been sleeping in the woods before that-USMC 80s