The Germans had not been able to blow up the Rhine bridges so much that they couldn’t be used. Repairs were made and the Rhine was crossed the first week of April 1945. In about 10 days we reached the Elbe River, which was as far as the Allied troops had agreed to go according to the agreement of the Allied leaders. We were less than 50 miles from Berlin and felt that we could have reached Berlin before the Russians, but most of all, the Russians wanted to take Berlin to pay the Germans back for what they had done when in the early part of the war they went into Russia and killed thousands of civilians and ruined the city of Stalingrad.
So we sat back and waited. On April 15th, the day after we reached the Elbe, some troops of our 405th Regiment came upon a barn in Gardelegen still afire and with smoldering bodies of 1016 Poles, French, Dutch, Belgian and one American. Three escaped alive. I visited the area the next day while the bodies were being removed by the people of the town and being buried in a large, common grave. A sign was put up by our troops, and I believe that it is still there to this day. I mention this because there are still people to this day do not believe the Germans committed the atrocities that they were alleged to have committed.
On our way across Germany we came across a Prisoner of War Camp in Dachau [more graphic photos.] I do recall that I stopped there and went in and saw the ovens, still with some bones of PoW’s that had been cremated.
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