Favourite WW2 Photo

While I was searching CARL Digital Archives, I stumbled across this photo of soldiers with the 93rd Infantry Division on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands:

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The description reads, "Cautious advance through the jungle while on patrol in Japanese territory off the Numa-Numa Trail."

 

Hi,I think my favourite photo is St.Paul's cathedral ,surrounded in smoke during the"Blitz".quite breathtaking.!

 

I presume you mean this photo:

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My favorite WWII pics are from German soldiers. But these yanks are funny, mischievous soldiers.

 

Great one, I hope he's shooting in the right direction .

 

If he's urinating, that's not going to work out too well.

 

I'm going to place it within the caption thread.

 

I love this photo. The background is that about 1000 Jewish women were pulled from Auschwitz to work in a munitions factory in Lippstadt, Germany (SS Kommando Lippstadt I). On about March 30th, 1945, the allies were closing in and a detachment of SS began marching the women to Bergen-Belsen to be killed. They were ordered to shoot the women if they encountered allied troops. On April 1st, at Kaunitz, Germany, a column of tanks from the 2nd Armored (Hell on Wheels) accompanied by infantry from the 30th Division (Old Hickory) materialized out of nowhere and bagged the entire bunch. There were 830 women still alive and they fell to the ground and actually kissed the wheels and treads of the Shermans. The women were filthy, covered with lice, starving to death. They were so overcome they were unable to speak and could only cry. When the GI's finally realized they were Jews, they also began crying and hugging the women.
April 1st was the last day of Passover and one of the Jewish GI's called back to the Regiment and soon boxes of Matzos (unleavened bread traditionally eaten at Passover) appeared. They took the women into the small town of Kaunitz and threw the Germans out of their homes. The women were able to bathe and take any fresh clothes they wanted. A company of GI's stayed with them. That night, using instruments looted from the Germans, they played music for them and held a modest celebration.

The photo below of a Czech mother and daughter was taken that day. The girl is 12 years old. The mother (I'm guessing) is 30 or 35, but looks 60. The mother has the "1000 yard stare" probably knowing that all the rest of her family is dead. The girl is also sad, but you can see a gleam of hope in her eyes. The young girl is beginning to look at the future, while her mother is still looking at the past.

Every time I look at this picture, I wonder what happened to this beautiful young girl.

 

Thank you!

The story as told by Anna Kaletska:

 

This picture is also from that incident. For some reason, I couldn't add it to the post above. You can see that some of the women are still in rags, and others are wearing parts of GI clothing, so this would be before they went into Kaunitz and took clothes from the German civilians.

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Here's a great picture. If you right click and "open in new tab" you can see it in high definition. The title is self-explanatory.

 

At some point (in other words, I don't recall), I came across this photo of a soldier from 2nd Bn, 129th Infantry on Bougainville. He obviously received a minor head wound. He's seems to be feeling well enough for a smoke break.

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This is my favorite photograph. I have it framed in my office. The fella on the front row, far right is my grandfather. For someone who never ventured more than a hundred miles from his father's farm before the war, I guess visiting exotic places like Egypt was one heck of an experience.