THE BIG PICTURE

this is lauren green in world war ii 61 u.s army divisions were locked in mortal combat with the enemy in the european theater of operations this film is about one of those divisions the 10th armored the 10th armored division was activated at fort benning georgia on the 15th of july 1942. from the very beginning it was known as a hot outfit its nickname tiger division the commanding general of the tenth major general paul w newgarden was a superb leader carry out orders march maneuver and shoot for his bywords no man had more pride in his troops and no general was more revered by his men i'm john drew devereaux i was a company commander in the 10th armored division during world war ii we had a marvelous kind of uh spirit in our division and i think it was due in great part to the training we got from general newgarden who was our division commander in the states uh he was killed in an airplane crash before we went overseas now he had a couple of uh very pet things that he liked one that we had to wear the top button of our coveralls buttoned uh this was pretty uncomfortable but after a while we got so that we looked at other outfits who wore them unbuttoned and we thought they looked like slobs he had a kind of thing that he liked to do about uh the salute when you gave a salute in the 10th armored division a tiger salute you lifted your chin up in the air like that that seemed pretty silly too until uh after a while we got used to it and then we thought we were the only outfit in the whole army that knew how to salute properly in july 1944 a new leader assumed command of the division following general newgarden's debt i am lieutenant general william h h morris jr u.s army retired i was commanding general of the 10th armored division in europe during world war ii the division sailed from new york on september 14 1944 the long period of training was over the men were prepared for anything but their wildest imagination could not conjure up what destiny held in store for them two days later on the 16th of september hitler meeting with his most trusted generals made a momentous decision a decision which would alter the course of the war operation christ rose the ardennes offensive a campaign in which the tigers of the tenth would cover themselves with glory and make military history the division arrived in battle torn sherburg on the 22nd of september and was immediately assigned to general walton walker's 20th corps which was under control of general george s patton's third army general patton came to visit our division and talked to the officers and non-commissioned officers as he did with all the divisions that were assigned to his army general patton covered very effectively the combat lessons learned during the war at the squad section and platoon level i'm colonel thomas chamberlain during world war ii i command the 11th tank battalion of the 10th armored division i can remember vividly the first days of combat the first orders we received colonel roberts called us into a small church yard in the town of shalom surmarn his first words were that the reason he called us into this particular churchyard in this particular town were that the this was the place that he had received his first orders to go into combat during world war one and he wanted to use this particular spot to start us off we moved up all afternoon past verdun and in the vicinity of mets and then that evening in a beautiful moonlight night it happened to be halloween night we infiltrated our half tracks one by one three minutes apart down a very spooky road through a village and up into a wooded area dismounted and then trucked on up and relieved the 90th division i'm william r desabre i was a battalion commander a major in the 10th armored division in world war ii the 10th armored division was a very well trained division its first combat was against mets mets was uh you might call it a defensive sector as far as the tenth is concerned we were supposed to aggressively patrol and we did we saw that every instrument and every weapon was fired at least once in more or less anger against the enemy i'm william lyndon roberts brigadier general u.s army retired i was combat command commander of ccb 10th armored division in world war i'm colonel curtis l hankins i was a battalion commander of the 61st armored infantry battalion in the 10th armored division my first encounter with enemy fire was during the defensive operation west of mets it was here that we learned to sense artillery fire that is determine the difference between outgoing which was friendly fire incoming which was german fire if you could determine with some degree of accuracy where the enemy allow rounds were going to land this would save a lot of wear and tear on your knees and elbows and you'd try to take cover every time the rounds would come over i am colonel james o'hara i commanded the 54th armored infantry battalion of the 10th armored division i consider that this initial baptism of fire in a defensive position was very good for the battalion it gave us time to gather our thoughts practice some of the things we've been learning in the states get our communications working having the reconnaissance platoon work with the free french practice patrolling all these things it's so necessary for a battalion to do i remember my first day in combat we felt very safe in a tank but during this first day after asking the first tank hit by 88 and burn we began to get scared but even though we were awful scared it didn't seem to be much of a handicap of doing our job which was to destroy the enemy and we did a fairly good job that first day my name is john winter i was a tank platoon sergeant 10th armored division during world war ii after fighting for about three weeks around mets we moved north to the vicinity of the town of theonville to participate in the third army offensive designed to capture mets the plan of twentieth corps to which the tenth armored was assigned had two phases to destroy the enemy in mets and to catch him as he tried to pull out of mets the mission of the tent was to make a deep penetration into the enemy's lines once it had crashed through the german defense the left column combat command b was to advance east and seize a bridgehead over the tsar river near mercy the right column combat command a was to take the division objective including husonville which was the center of arterial highway and railroad traffic running northeast of mets the enemy blocked the way and fought savagely the tigers clawed their way through the german defense by the time the division had completed its first major offensive mission it had taken 64 towns repulsed eleven counter attacks captured two thousand prisoners and destroyed great quantities of materiel but the price was high on december 7th hitler approved the final draft of operation christ rose now renamed watch on the rhine hitler's plan of attends with three armies the sixth panzer army led by the butcher from bavaria sepp dietrich the fifth panzer army led by baron hasselhoff and montoya and the seventh army led by general brandenburger they would cross the miers river on the second day between liege and namur brussels and reach the great port of antwerp on the seventh day this operation hitler believed would destroy more than 30 american and british divisions he believed it would be the beginning of the end for the allies within the next week thousands upon thousands of troops and thousands upon thousands of tons of materiel were transported secretly from assembly areas to terminals just behind the front lines on the eve of december 15th one quarter of a million germans stood poised on the line of departure prepared to annihilate the enemy so at 5 30 a.m the following morning flame erupted along an 85 mile front hitler's great drive to antwerp had begun on december the 16th 1944 about 6 p.m i received a telephone call from general walker the 20th call informing me that was going to be transferred with the entire division to the first army and be placed under the eighth call that there had been an attack by the germans in the vicinity of luxembourg i immediately dispatched my chief of staff to bass dome the headquarters the eighth corps for orders the chief of staff returned about 2 am the next morning and informed me that the division was to go into a quartering area just west of luxembourg when the battle of the bulge began my unit was in a rest area south of luxembourg we received orders to be prepared to move north on 24 hours notice a short time later the alert was changed to 12 hours a short time later we were on the road the 10th armored division uh sent two of his combat commands northwest of uh uh luxembourg to go into action there and they sent my combat command west to north to uh ireland and then on to north to bass stone i preceded my outfit uh in the bastogne and got into bastogne about four o'clock in the afternoon and found general middleton general middleton asked me how my outfit fought and how many pieces my outfit would fight and i told him three he said all right send one to noville which is six or seven kilometers north one east to longville and one southeast to bra a little sidelight here i'd held up the march of our outfit to to get o'hara in front because o'hara had not been in the fighting heavily down around the mertzig area so we got o'hare in front and i sent him out to bra i took my team down this road toward wilts and we stopped for the night opposite the town of warden on our way down this road we passed many american soldiers coming to the rear most of whom seemed to be from the 28th division apparently they'd been hit hard further forward when we got to our destination for the night since we see we received our orders at five in the afternoon and there was not much daylight left we settled to stride the road and blocked the road to wilts i arrived in bastogne just as night was falling i found a mp who led me to colonel roberts cp it was a very brief meeting in colonel robert cp told me that o'hara had been sent out to the east of the town and was in a defensive position and that cherry was moving out slightly to the northeast of the town and as soon as my column arrived i was to keep moving and move to the north of the town to a little place called novell if there are any germans in noville i was to knock them out of the town and to occupy it if there were no germans i was to occupy noville going no further north because this would be the limit of the range of the 10th armored division artillery which was located in the vicinity of bastogne this then was the disposition of combat command b on the 18th of december the night of their arrival in bastogne team deso brie was at nobile team cherry at longbilly team o'hara at warden the total strength of the three defending units was about 75 tanks and 2 800 officers and men battering at the gates of bastogne were the advanced elements of general montoya's fifth panzer army and general brandenburger's seventh army approximately 300 tanks and fifty thousand men whose mission in addition to taking sandeep and built was to take bastogne and to take it fast it was the most important road junction in the southern area of the arden combat section and in the event general eisenhower's reserve forces which we suspect that when near hans arrived to attack they would have to pass bastogne uncommon former general of the panzer troops and commander-in-chief of the fifth panzer army we completed establishing the defenses of noville about midnight actually the defense was a routine traditional type defense we set out roadblocks to the east one to the north and one to the northwest because these were the directions that we expected the germans to attack us the fighting throughout the night was sporadic it was a piecemeal attack they would hit us with small units from the north and then it hit us with small units from the east cherry who's not here went out to longville came back at midnight and found me asleep he asked that he be allowed to sit on a road out east east of magaret short of longville because he had found a combat command ccr of the 9th armored division in position 10 or 12 tanks a kernel and some artillery i gave him permission to stay where he was cherry never got back to his command in the meantime some of the panzer lair division had cut in behind his outfit he never joined however his headquarters went in to uh the little nephew chateau at nephi chateau cherry had a tank or two and uh oh few machine guns and his whole headquarters company and he put up a real nice fight all day that evening he had to retire he felt like he had to get out because they were being he was being burned out terry lined up his vehicles to go out he was to go out last in a jeep he went outside he got two tommy guns he emptied one tommy gun to the right got the other opted to the left climbed in his jeep and pulled out the driver was hit the jeep was hit the medico in the back was hit cherry got out he got a dsc for this my battalion spent the night on the high ground south of warden and all night long we saw no german troops or heard nothing of them however we did have one straggler come to the rear who told us they were east of us in the wilts area about 10 o'clock in the morning they came down from the welts road and shot up the artillery observers tank and one or two other tanks we fought on all morning long and part of the afternoon staying in the same position there keeping the germans at bay at first the defense of bastogne rested with three units of the 10th armored division task force to sobering in the northeast task force cherry in the east and task force o'hara in the southeast i am general anthony mcauliffe united states army retired i was at bastogne with the 101st airborne division in mid-december 1944 the 101st airborne division was at a place called camp mermelon near the city of rance in france we were recuperating from the holland airborne operation where we had suffered about 30 percent casualties and we were absorbing our replacements and going through a training program general taylor had been recalled to washington and i was the acting commander of the division i believe it was on december 18th that we received a telephone call from the chief of staff of the 18th airborne corps saying that the division should be prepared to move the following day to the north to the town of verbum we had known that the germans had attacked but we didn't know the extent of the attack or the conditions to the north but we made all preparations to get away the following day and the first thing in the morning i preceded the division to the north in a sedan with my aid to camp and my operations officer as i drove north i reached the crossroad just a couple of miles west of the town of bastogne i knew that eighth corps headquarters was located in that town so i decided to drive over to that core headquarters and try to learn something more about the situation it was fortunate that i did so because i learned from the corps commander general middleton that the orders for the 101st airborne division had been changed and that the division would come to bastogne rather than to go to vermont i also met there colonel roberts who was a commander of combat command b of the 10th armored division who were already on the scene and already in the fighting desperately was attacked about five or six times that first day he will describe during the uh morning of that first day uh one battalion under colonel prey to the 101st airborne joined him they as soon as colonel prayed joined they decided to attack apparently at the same time the germans decided to attack at 1400 hours the paratroopers and our tanks and our armored entry launched the attack at 1400 hours the german forces launched an all-out attack on noville so we had the situation of the germans and the american units attacking one another simultaneously from points about 700 yards distance actually the germans were stopped they withdrew back behind the ridge our paratroopers on the northwest of the town actually gained the ridge the tanks the armamentary and the paratroopers on the northeast of the town were unable to get to their positions so after a fight of about 45 minutes or an hour we withdrew the paratroopers from the north east back into the town of noville desert was hit badly and colonel prayed was killed that evening and i didn't know desiree was hurt for uh 24 hours he was later captured when the hospital was captured for the next three days and nights the defenders of estonia slugged it out with a numerically superior enemy then on the 22nd of december when the besieged city was finally encircled the commanding general of the 47th panzer corps sent the following surrender ultimatum it called for the surrender of the bastogne garrison if the americans did not comply within two hours bastogne would be completely destroyed and its defenders annihilated general mcauliffe's one word answer nuts reverberated around the world we're locked in the european of operations this building is about one of those divisions the 10th armored its nickname was the tiger division on the 16th of december 1944 hitler began his great drive to the port of antwerp the ardennes offensive six days later on the 22nd of december strong german forces surrounded the outnumbered and outgunned american defenders of bastogne a key communication center vital to the success of hitler's plan as a result of this encirclement the commanding general of the german 47th principle delivered a surrender ultimatum to general anthony mcauliffe commander of the bastogne garrison general mcauliffe's reply to the german commander was nuts fighting in the beleaguered city was combat command b of the 10th armored division from the very beginning of the battle for bastogne heavy fog and bad flying weather prevented aerial resupply and fighter support there was a shortage of surgical equipment and not enough blankets for the men suffering from wounds and shock ammunition was running low and some of the artillery batteries were down to less than 10 rounds per gun but the morning of december 23rd broke clear and cold and visibility was unlimited from england to the box holes of estonia where every man looked up to the sky and prayed and their prayers were answered i'm william lyndon roberts brigadier general u.s army retired i was combat command commander of ccb 10th armored division in world war ii the 19th tactical 19th tack we called them furnished us every half hour a squadron of planes which circled circled us at the same time by some luck a captain staggered into bastogne how he got there i don't know but he was an expert on operating with the air from the ground had a fine vhf set which could work with the air we set that thing up in in the middle of the compound and he he used the air as follows the air here the airplanes carried uh napalm bombs ordinary bombs rockets and what he called bullets he says i pull the napalm bombs first then i pull this bomb next i pulled the rockets next then i gave them bullets and before i let them go i uh made them circle once to give us new targets i have estimated that this that the air was equal to at least two divisions of health because uh they could see in the snow which had newly fallen where the tanks had gone and they were able to bomb all of these all these uh little woods and one time they found a column moving right toward the fourth armored division which was battling to to get into us and i think the air the next air squadron destroyed the whole group i am general anthony mcauliffe united states army retired i was at bastogne with the 101st airborne division in 1944. one of the saddest and most dramatic incidents occurred on christmas eve night we had asked for volunteers when we lost our hospital and a very fine trained nurse the daughter of the village hardware store keeper renee lemaire volunteered she took charge of a group of wounded from the 10th armored division in a house on the main street of bastogne but on christmas eve a 500-pound bomb struck the house went all the way through and none of the 10th army division soldiers nor rainy the mayor not a one survived on december 26 elements of the fourth armored division crashed into bastogne the encirclement was broken and for the germans it was the beginning of the end after we'd been in there about 30 days on the 16th of january we were relieved we left bastogne in one of the worst blizzards i've ever seen going up long way hill about 40 miles south great big long hill with a gentle slope the tanks just couldn't make it they they were sliding back like like bears on a slippery slide in uh thinking thinking it over i've decided that if we had been in bastogne alone without any infantry we couldn't have held 10 minutes 101st airborne without the steel that my outfit afforded could not have held but the steel of my outfit and the blood and flesh of that their outfit made a pretty tough combination it's always seemed regrettable to me that combat command b of the 10th armor division didn't get the credit it deserved in the battle of bastogne all of the newspaper and radio talk was about the paratroopers actually the 10th armored division was in there a day before we were and had some very hard fighting before we ever got into it and i sincerely believe that we would never have been able to get into bastogne if it had not been for the defensive fighting of the three elements of the 10th armored division who were first in the bastogne and protected the town from invasion by the germans on the 20th of february 1945 following a much needed rest and refitting the 10th armored division was rolling in high gear again the mission this time was to clear the czar moselle triangle and capture the city of trier an important supply and communication center and one of the most heavily fortified areas in the world this was the job general patton had started in november of 1944 but left unfinished because of the ardennes counter-offensive i am colonel james o'hara i commanded the 54th armored infantry battalion of the 10th armored division our division was involved in action in the sarmo's l triangle on two different occasions on the first occasion i was not involved on the second occasion was after the battle of bastogne we were told to drive to cyborg as i recall the 94th division which was an empty division cleared the way through the siegfried line and we followed and got into sardberg with little incident when we got up to the sire river our division headquarters moved into the town of ale and planned a river crossing for this river crossing general piburn who commanded cca was put in command he was given all three of the armored infantry battalions as his command and told to take them over the river and assault boats and seize the high ground on the other side my name is john drew devereaux i was a company commander in the 10th armored division during world war ii i think the river crossing we did on the way to trier was one of the things that i would least like to have to do again we did it at night and uh it's always more difficult to do something at night and it's a lot more scary we carried these assault boats for what seemed like about five miles through the woods when we came out of the woods at the edge of the uh river we had to go across a lot of open field and over some fences while we were going through there it was pitch dark of course and all of a sudden we walked into a not only a minefield but the whole place was booby trapped just as the first mine or first booby trap went off of course they began to let us have it with mortar and artillery fire and uh people screaming medic you didn't know whether you should put your foot down again in front of you for fear you're gonna step on something whether you should just stay right where you were or what to do it uh it's about a scarier thing as i've ever been through we finally got to the river crossed without too much trouble but i tell you it was a it was a great feeling to get on the other side and get on solid ground again we got up to the top of the hill and down in the valley below there we met again with general pyburn there was not too much action at this time and we saw many prisoners coming to the rear however there were a number of pill boxes which had to be cleared out now general piburn gave us our choice of when to clear these pill boxes out some of them didn't clean them out in the daytime i mean some of our italians in my case i decided to clear these pill boxes at night we'd had a lot of training back in the states on how to take a pill box so uh when it came our turn to do this we were fairly well prepared for it we crawled through about 1500 yards of open field got down into an anti-tank ditch and then the uh approved routine was that your bazooka man was to fire his bazooka at the observation slit of the pillbox while a couple of the others went around the back and threw grenades in well i turned to the bazooka man and i said okay now you uh fire at the observation slits and he said okay and he turned around to the rocket man say give me the rocket for the bazooka only to find that the rocket man was lying on his stomach about 1500 yards way back where we'd started so there was nothing much to do there but uh take a couple of n1s and pop away at the slit while the platoon sergeant myself went around the back it was uh was rather like the movies uh toon sergeant would open the door back door the pill box and i'd take a grenade and throw it in and then we'd heat slam the door and we'd both lean on it make sure nobody got out uh we did the this pretty well all afternoon and i think about the end of the afternoon we had maybe 150 prisoners by february 21st 48 hours after the attack on the tsar moselle triangle began the tigers of the tent together with elements of the 94th infantry division had overrun 85 square miles of german real estate and captured 23 towns thus setting the stage for the subsequent capture of trier well the 10th army was then given the mission of taking a town of trier so we were sent down the road and we're told to to capture trier and we had to go through a town called zurp my battalion get up near the town of zurf we found that the germans which we had knocked out from the area around the river had retreated just behind zerf and they were zeroing in on zurf with heavy artillery i had gone past sir in the morning and found that the town was boiling with artillery didn't see how anybody could live there i moved on up to a battalion that had lost its whole headquarters some sick some absent one kill and my my executive and i took over this battalion it was raining it was dark they were they were shelling at the same time general patton was raising cain with general walker the corps commander who was raising cain with general morris the division commander who was raised in the devil with me to get into trier as i said practically all the divisions around here except my little force that was just being relieved of zerf colonel richardson lieutenant colonel richardson was commanding i heard that he was to be relieved by the rangers in the afternoon it didn't deserve they were yelling over the radio uh i sat in the headquarters that evening with roberts my exec and we just we used an old map and decided we'd play this as a map problem we wanted to go around to the right but we found out that it was dark we didn't have guides it was loaded with mines we knew those big minefields up there were afraid to do that the only road was directly into trailer but you couldn't hold a hand up in the afternoon on this road because uh the germans were on the ridges on each side so we didn't couldn't figure on this road but all at once it occurred to us that it was black and the german couldn't see anybody on the road so we decided we'd send him down this road richardson got loose came into the headquarters we told him he's going in he brought his young officers in briefed them i remember he told one outfit i'll take the uh bridge to the right you take the bridge to the left that happened that we knew that these two bridges were still intact from airplane photographs that day to make a long story short richardson got into town and that one his bridge blew up in front of his face he hadn't heard a boom for the other bridge so he rambled down in his tank to the other bridge found out that it hadn't blown that there was a little shooting from this end of the bridge but it was sporadic and wasn't organized he organized appetite or a platoon sent it across the bridge he had his tank and some other stuff fire on the other end of the bridge and fortunately they got across they captured the man who the officer who was supposed to uh blow it he directed them to 10 or 11 other officers who would have told on him if they'd got away they were in the back of a cafe so he got the whole group my name is john winter i was a tank platoon sergeant of the 10th armored division during world war ii after trier was taken we shoved on to whitley's germany after taking whitledge we pulled back the trier and was promised the rest but my particular platoon and a platoon of uh infantry was given the mission of on the opposite side of the mountain from tehrir to try to take a bridge intact we started out under the cover of darkness as we approached in this valley where the bridge was supposed to be the germans were set with 88s and infantry are waiting for us that's where i lost my tank when it was hit it immediately burnt and i bailed out the top of it dived out the top and running at a large dairy barn for cover on the 16th of march the entire division was pushing toward the rhine to get there the tigers dealt with endless enemy pillboxes dragon's teeth roadblocks and worst of all about 100 000 well-trained german troops i'm colonel curtis l hankins i was a battalion commander of the 61st armored infantry battalion in the 10th armored division one event that i remember on the race to the line concerns the destruction of a german supply column this took place between kaiserslautern and frankenstein with the aid of the air force who had bottled up some german vehicles earlier today we were able to destroy an entire german army's supply train this was recognized as one of the greatest concentrations of enemy equipment of the entire war and general patton came down to take a look at this and said it was the most fantastic destruction of an enemy column that he had seen during the entire war the tigers reached the rhine valley in a little over a week capturing in their drive 8 000 prisoners and cutting off the escape route for more than 50 000 germans on the 28th of march they crossed the rhine at worms for the final cleanup that was to take them clear to the austrian and bavarian alps three days later after heavy fighting the division rolled through the historic university city of heidelberg but the tigers were getting tired after six months of continuous vicious fighting the division was now 50 percent below strength and the men were showing the inevitable signs of wear and tear this was a dangerous situation although the germans were definitely on the run they still packed a murderous wallop on the 3rd of april 1945 the 10th armored division and the battalion of the 100th infantry division received orders to seize the town of heilbronn and continue east i am lieutenant colonel george hamill during world war ii i was a company commander in the 21st tank battalion 10th armored division the division had been ordered to seize the city of heilbronn a key communications center and our battalion task force riley had driven up to the very gates of heil braun only to find that the bridges across the neca river were blown in our faces the division was then ordered to attempt to cut off heilbronn from the rear task force hankins crossed the necker river north of heilbronn and made a wire chime and continue on towards schwabisch hall we successful shine went through the next large town called ilshofen and penetrated deeper into german territory when we came to some blown bridges and were completely stopped by this time the germans had reacted to this penetration into their rear the german reaction was violent it was his greatest display of strength since the ardennes offensive by the 8th of april trailshime had been cut off by the germans suppliers were running low for the americans in the city and it looked as though another bastogne might be in the making but the air force came through again in the next two days transports from the ninth troop carrier command brought the necessary gas options and ammunition to sustain the tigers despite their ability to beat off one enemy attack after another the tigers could not maintain supremacy of trail shuttle and reindral from the area we all resented i think the fact that we had to give up this terrain that we'd taken and held certainly we were not driven out we withdrew it was a sad disappointment indeed to receive orders to withdraw from creoshin especially after it appeared that the overall objective had been won from the 11th to the 22nd of april the combat fatigue tigers streaked south by the 23rd of april they stood toys along the north bank of the danube river southeast of ulm where the 44th infantry division was already fighting and where intelligence reports indicated the first german army planned to make a desperate stand the city fell in a matter of a few hours as the lead vehicle passed the outskirts of the town at 8 54 in the morning i immediately sent the message back to combat command and a few minutes later the paris radio announced that the american forces had captured all when in fact we were still fighting there with the capitulation of ulm the tenths three combat commands raced forward with violent effectiveness town after town was gobbled up in the great rush our division was ordered to attack down through the bavarian alps to the brenner pass to link up with american troops coming north through italy the germans had threatened to make a last-ditch stand in what was referred to as the german national readout area there had been a lot of talk about uh undercover activities by what the germans referred to as werewolves as we approached the alps we could see them from a distance and it certainly made all of us pause wonder what awaited us they were very beautiful great snow-capped peaks but for an armored unit uh it was also rather forbidding actually when we get into the alps we found very little resistance and our battalion went down into garmisch partner cushion through the town of myrnal another column went down an international red cross representative came up to the other side of the roadblock he had with him a german captain they wanted to negotiate for the city of garmisch-partenkirkin the scene of the 1936 winter olympics they wanted us to agree not to shoot up the town after considerable discussion we agreed not to shoot unless the germans fired at us first when we arrived at the town the international red cross representative escorted us through the town and the germans lived up to their bargain and didn't begin firing until we well beyond the city this ended the war for my task force and i can't think of a better place to end it than garbage partner i'm colonel thomas chamberlain during world war ii i command the 11th tank battalion of the 10th armored if the staff of the division had spent two years trying to pick out the best place to end a war they could not have as well as we act there there were big hotels on the lakes where the men go swimming and boating of course plenty of skiing and ice skating in addition there were horses available so that they could go horseback riding it made a fine place to relax after the war the war was over and won the tigers of the temple had met and conquered the best of the enemy they had covered 600 bitter bloody miles from sherburg to the brenner pass fighting almost every inch of the way they have taken 56 000 prisoners and 600 cities and towns yes the war was over and won the fighting was finished and done you