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SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Our Patriots photo
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Our Patriots photo
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Our Patriots photo
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Our Patriots photo
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Our Patriots photo
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > A photograph from the war memorabilia of my father, Ned Wells. Taken just outside of Tiefenbach, Germany, May 3rd, 1945. Three Russian prisoners (used as slave laborers by the SS), who survived execution at the hands of fleeing SS troopers, standing among their slain comrades. Ned, who was in a heavy machine gun squad in the 26th Infantry Division, wrote on the back of this photograph, "Three of the luckiest ones, amid their buddies. The mound in back is the grave they were made to dig as they were tortured & finally killed. The little stream in the left background actually ran blood - I saw it." The massacre had occurred four days prior, on April 29th, 1945, about a week before the end of the war in Europe, as the 26th Division pressed toward Passau, Germany, in Bavaria. The Americans counted 42 bodies in and around the shallow mass grave. Ned's commanders in the 26th ordered the local citizens to exhume and re-inter the bodies in individual coffins in a properly-dug mass grave, both of which the locals were made to build and to dig. The G.I.'s gave the Russians a proper funeral with full military honors. The only reference I have found in any book (other than the one I wrote based on Dad's war journal) about this massacre is in a book by Anna Rosmus - Wintergreen: Suppressed Murders - in which she names three Russian survivors of the massacre. These men are very likely the three named in her book. A marker that reads "Hier Ruhen Russische Soldaten" (German for "Here Rest Russian Soldiers") was eventually placed at the site of the massacre on the hillside in the woods southwest of Tiefenbach. The 42 bodies were again exhumed in 1956 and re-interred in a larger memorial and cemetery in Neumarkt, Germany. The marker in the woods near Tiefenbach remains.
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Statue of Civil War soldier. Part of a Civil War Memorial erected in 1897. I have seen several statues of Civil War soldiers in S.E. Michigan. They all look very similar, if not identical. It is possible that such statues were more or less mass produced in the second half of the 19th century, for use in Civil War monuments and memorials, and that most were made by one, or a small number of companies. For a picture of a similar statue in Dexter, Michigan, see: http://arctangent.smugmug.com/gallery/5329713_SGhCx#370000791_dCqbz Oak Grove Cemetery, Chelsea, Michigan
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Our Patriots photo
SmugMug > keywords > infantryman > Sporting a miniature Combat Infantryman's Badge and a Bronze Star ribbon on his hat, North Carolina native Ned Wells (my dad), visits the National WWII Memorial for the first time. Ned was a heavy machine gunner in the 26th "Yankee" Infantry Division in Patton's Third Army. (Sep 24th, 2006)
Our Patriots photo
Photo by: MA-SAR • see photo in gallery
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