When we finally got orders to move
out from Mulde River bridgehead, we headed south following a lot of heavy armor.
There were a few battles enroute that I don’t care to describe. What I think
might of interest is that eventually we wound up in a very small village called
Schönsee – which means beautiful lake. The implication was that there must be a
beautiful lake around somewhere, but we never saw it.
The Germans had decided to take a
final stand here. They did have some anti-tank weapons which they tried to use.
If we lost any tanks, I didn’t hear about it. All this way I was driving a
weapons carrier – I felt like a freshly shelled peanut being out in the open. It
was quite different from being in my armored M8.
It didn’t take too long before we
had taken the city. Unfortunately, we had to do a lot of damage to the city – or
really it was a village. People were very concerned about the damage. They
weren’t mad at us; they were mad at the German Army because, they all agreed,
the war was already lost. The stand was a waste of people and property with
nothing gained. Added to the devastation was the influx of refugees pouring in
from Czechoslovakia.
