To all fans of "Band of Brothers": Did Lt. Speirs kill all those P.O.W.s? I don't know if it was addressed by Ambroses's book but I can't find any thing in Google that deals with it. He is showed offering them a smoke and then you hear automatic weapon's fire and see the response on the face of a witness. Later on in the series he claims that it might have been trying to seem the meanest ..... Any ideas?

You don't see it discussed often in print.
I once saw an interview with two old Brit paratroopers discussing their jump. At the briefing before it, one of "the lads" asked how prisoners would be handled.
The answer was "We sha'nt be taking prisoners the first few days...."

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

I too wondered the same thing and tried to see what I could find out about it and came up with ziltch. Ronald Speirs died in April of 2007, so we can't go and ask him either.

I consider it highly probable that he killed the prisoners. I'm not so sure about the story of him killing one of his own NCO's though. Things were so confusing at that place and time who can say.

Since your talking paras in Normandy some of you might enjoy this interview: Playing Don Jakeway: D-Day Jumper | Ohio War Stories

Mr Jakeway is still very active locally and we cross paths about every other month. I considered him a Community Organizer before the term was corrupted by the current batch of politicians. For example, when the town didn't have a public pool for the kids in the summer, he organized the local businessmen to pool their money and invest in one. The town didn't have a Little League until he organized the sports fans and started one. If he really felt something needed done to better the community he could organize people and get done what he felt was needed. That's what used to be ment by Community Organizer.

I had the opportunity to speak with Don Malarkey on two occasions. He offered to let me pay for his lunch on one of them(I did).
I asked about Spears and his response was that they had no provisions for prisoners. That was all.

I recall a uncle of mine telling me this story. He was in the 82nd and was with the gliders. He was in just about every glider invasion. This time they were hauling a jeep and 14 troops. He said they were cut loose at night. The maps they had to land with showed empty field but was now orchards and barriers! His LT wanted him to carry field cross,s. Uncle eldon was very supersticous and balked at that, but of course the LT won. Eldon said the Lt strapped himself right next to him. He said the LT got his head blew off by ground fire next to him.
He said they crashed, nosed over etc. He said when he woke up his face was in the radiator of the jeep. He said just him and one other guy out of the 14 lived. The other guy was badly wounded too, uncle had his back injured and face completly smashed. They crawled off together and was able to get away in the dark as the krauts mopped up. He said they hid for three days and nights before they finaly contacted other troops. He said a old farmer and his daughter helped them and hid them in some hay as the krauts were hot on them. He said they watched from hideing as the krauts exicuted the farmer and daughter. Then going back across the channel their boat got hit and they had to get rescued again. He lived with me for awhile in the 70s. He got a heart attack, had open heart surgery in the early days of it. He had a stroke on the operateing table and it affected his mind. He had never married. He committed suicide in 1973. I have some local home paper writeups on him at the end of the war. somewhere and will try to publish them here when I can find it. He also first hand told me of being one of the first in a death camp that they found and discribed the horror he seen. Some were still alive. I also have some souveniers he gave me. One is a russian pocket watch. I asked him how he got that. He laughed and said he took it off a russian solider. They were waiting at the rhine, and he said the first russian he seen he threw down on and took the watch. He said, hell I thought he was a jap!

My father worked with a man who served in the 82nd in WWII, he told us 2 stories both about the Battle of the Bulge after Malmedy had been discovered.

One about a Belgian or a man in civlilian clothes caught trying to go through a rodablack and during a searchof his person they found a Brwoning Hi-Power. he never left the roadblock, and about not having the time nor the inclination to take prisoners after they heard about the masscre.

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Stan

As far as I know, nobody actually saw him do it, and he never confessed to doing it. So I see no reason to slander a fine officer over what amounts to little or no proof.

That said, I think there is a difference--legally at least--between "not taking prisoners", and taking prisoners and then shooting them.

Lest there be a misunderstanding, I'm not making a "value judgement". I would make no condemnation of any action of any member of our troops in any action. I'm just talking about the mysterious treatment of the act in the limited scope of a TV mini-series. Maybe it was "poetic liscense" or some literary device of which I'm not familiar. I hoped that someone had read the original Ambrose book or had seen some other explanation. Whatever, it's an element that starts fairly early in the series and surfaces in brief glimpses almost to the end. It serves to magnify the intensity that battle causes, and maybe that is all that's meant to do.

I think in the context of that episode of Band Of Brothers it was clear Spiers killed all of the prisoners after giving them smokes. It is referenced later when some of the guys are talking about Spiers, and when he deliberately offers a new guy a smoke to rattle him a little.

I don't know if the real Spiers did the deed, though.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

...instances of "dramatic" license taken in the series -

• As mentioned, Lt Spiers allegedly killing German POW's.
• Near the end of the Battle of The Bulge, it was shown that Lt. Norman Dike was killed. He wasn't, and survived the war.

The foregoing are two. I'm sure there were more.

I knew someone who told me anyone caught rapeing in his outfit "got shot" by the "germans". Certain things werent tolerated.
My mother just had the one brother that I wrote about plus her sisters husband in. But my dad was from a huge family. Dad was the oldest of 10, also had 7 older half brothers and sisters for a head count of 17 kids! Dads youngest brother did korea. I think I had about 8 or 9 uncles in world war two counting aunts husbands. Every one of them came back alive! Also a couple of older half uncles in world war one. I even had a great uncle that was in the russian army about 1908. I know my grandmother lost family members that fought for germany in the war. One of my dads younger brothers was a MP, interpiter and sometimes drove patton. He is about 92 now still alive in wisconsin. I lost two uncles that were in, just this last year. Out of the 9 or so I just have the one uncle alive that was in. They are all almost gone now. My earliest memorys of them was when they all came home pretty close together, I think in a matter of a couple months. It was party time!

IIRC Dick Winters Book: Beyond Band of Brothers
(Which I got as a Karma here & passed along)
says the story is true along with Spiers killing a drunk Sgt. who refused to patrol

I remember it because I always thought it was just rumor
but Winter confirms it

So if anyone has the book they can check my memory

Malarkey was upset that Ambrose showed Webster; who had become friends with Ambrose, in bed with the German girl.
He said that the artillery barrage scene was 100x worse in reality than in the film, causing his hearing problem.
He also remarked on the slight color errors of the equipment and uniforms
as being different from what he remembered. After the war the were able to meet with Sobel's sister and express their thanks.
What was touching to him, was having people in the restaurant overhearing our conversation; I was speaking loudly, and coming up and thanking him for his service.

Spiers did kill a drunk sergeant. But since it was the early days of the invasion and officers were hard to come by the brass just had to look the other way. I think I read about it in the Dick Winters book.

I have a friend whose father in law celebrated his 17th birthday by jumping out of an airplane over Normandy with the 82nd.

He tells of some "German" conscripts attempting to surrender to him that morning. He says that he was so scared and lonely, that he shrugged his shoulders, tossed a grenade toward them, and they ran one way and he the other.

There were terrible acts committed by all sides in that war.

Some still bothered my uncle, a Methodist Minister who carried a BAR throughout the retaking of the Philippines, while he was on his deathbed in the 1994.

I had another neighbor who owed his life to a German soldier who released the POWs in the barracks he was guarding into the night because he told his prisoners the SS was coming in the morning to kill the POWs. He always wondered if that guard survived.

That being said, The Allies were much better disicplined and on the whole conducted themselves better than most warring parties do.

I too, had read somewhere (sorry, that sounds terrible, but I can't remember where or document it) that Spiers did shoot the German prisoners.

In Ambrose's excellent book, Band of Brothers, you read that just about everything in the mini-series is true.

I found the most interesting thing to be that Sobel tried to shoot himself after the war and failed at that too. His wife and family became estranged from him and the members of Easy Company always tried to reach out to him for reunions, but he refused their attempts.

From the standpoint of general interest, this link is to a site that was set up to honor Eugene Roe (the medic). Band Of Brothers : A site dedicated to Medic Eugene Roe

The site includes a bunch of links and postings including some from Ronald Spiers' family. It seems the site is light on maintenance but is quite interesting. I used the "keyword" search feature and found a lot of discussion about Spiers.

I hope that helps,

Frank

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sona si latine loqueris .

One day my barber was talking about being in WWll. He was a captain and told me that he and some others was assigned to escort a group of prisoners back behind the lines. He said they got over the hill and shot them all. They then came back to the front line. I don't remember more details, but that admission bothered me for a long time, until I learned more about such things. He died in 1975 and he was not really that old. I have no idea what unit he was with, heck I don't even remember his name.

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Richard Gillespie
FBINA 102

35 years ago, my then girl friend's father shared a few things about his experiences in WWII. He joined the Army in 1942 (retired in 1962) becoming an NCO during the war. By the end of the war, he was a senior NCO. He was later commissioned a 2nd Lt. just before leaving post-war Europe to serve in Korea. He didn't talk much about Korea, but made one thing clear about his unit during WWII, Nazi SS need not apply for a positons as POWs. He noted (and without any regret whatsoever) that on one particular occasion they lined some SS up against a wall and let loose with a .30 MG. I seem to recall it being at the liberation of a concentration camp or POW camp.

Interestingly, my uncle who served with 3rd Army in Europe as a medic said similar things about the SS. He remarked that they were a bit cazy and just too hard to handle as POWs.

FWIW

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1st Signal Brigade, RVN '70

The home in Bay St. Louis,Ms. where Ambrose did a lot of his writing was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

My father was in the Battle of the Bulge. He was in the 975th Engineering Batallion. His platoon was pulled out and sent up front to do night patrols to scout out the Germans.
After he and the others heard of Malmedy, he despised the Germans. And he was a second-generation German/American.
I doubt he would have executed, or allowed such a thing, to any prisoners they might have taken but he sure wouldn't have offered them a cigarette, like he saw some GIs do.
Interestingly, our last name is obviously German. Dad was told that he'd better not be taken prisoner, because the Germans were particularly hard on American GIs who had German ancestry. You were seen as a traitor to your race.
My mother was Belgian, and fought in the Belgian Resistance during the war. She was widowed at 26, when the Germans executed her husband. He had been a Belgian Resistance leader, betrayed by another, and thrown into Breendonk torture camp south of Brussels. He was executed two weeks before D-Day.
Mom was twice imprisoned by the Gestapo, at St. Gilles Prison in Brussels, for her activities.
She had more reason to hate the Germans, but Dad hated them more. He refused to enter that country when they visited Belgian relatives.
Mom was more forgiving toward the average German soldier, but really hated the SS and Gestapo.

Did Lt. Speirs kill all those Germans? Only he knows, and he's not talking on this side. But if he did, I'm sure it bothered him later. I've known a lot of combat veterans, and they later found it hard to reckon some of the things they did as young men.
Young men generally haven't acquired the conscience and compassion of those older. And besides, they were trained to kill or be killed themselves. Quite the motivation.
I can see it happening, especially in Normandy where many got their first exposure to war and they'd seen their buddies killed.

To quote Gen. William T. Sherman, the Union general: "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."

The subject of 'prisoners' in the opening phases of an action has always been a touchy subject. I recall seeing a black&white film of a group of GI's bringing some German's out from a captured pillbox, everything seemed to be going well, GI's with arms ready, Germans with hands in the air. Suddenly someone fired a shot, and that was the end of them.
I remember an interview with the makers of 'The Longest Day', they really tried to get that film as right as it could be for the time (sometimes missing the mark) as they're where many vets still alive who would be watching it (early '60's), the one scene on top of the pillboxes where Germans came out of the fortifications with hands raised shouting 'Bitte, Bitte' and where shot down caused a great deal of grief with the makers and the censors at the time, but it was protrayed a delicately as possible. The makers felt it was important enough to show.
I believe "Bitte" means 'Please!' in German.
i'm glad I was never in that situation, it would be a hell of a thing to reconcile with oneself for the rest of your lifetime.

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Got a Phd from Hard Knocks U

The first one is the hardest...
They were the enemy and if they had the chance they would kill you.Simple



Ken

I believe "Bitte" means 'Please!' in German.

Smithhound, you are correct. By the way, my late father in law was Wermacht (German Army) and a paratrooper. He told me once that the popular word to use when surrendering (he never did) was "kamerad", which means "buddy" or "pal". He was one tough old man, and I really miss him. Seeing him and some of his war buddies who were in their late 70s, I had to wonder, how in the hell did we beat those guys in two world wars?

Regards,

Dave

Some things that were related to me by a man that served over there during the war;

The patrol he was part of was deep behind enemy lines when they captured six Germans. He said their options were that they could take them with them, they could take their weapons and let them go, they could tie them to a tree or... They were a small patrol, so they couldn't take them with them, tying them to the tree was no go, the Germans could've freed themselves or someone could have come along and found them and released them and then everyone would've known where to find the patrol he was in and simply letting them go was no good for the same reason. They simply had no choice.

On another patrol they took fire from someone with a rifle up in a tree, his LT and two SGTs were killed, with one other person wounded. It was a 15 year old boy who dropped the rifle and then climbed down out of the tree, he figured that he had used the five rounds he had and now he would surrender. He said that they liked their Lieutenant and the two Sargeants were good friends and they were pretty angry, they told the boy that nope, it doesn't work that way, stood him against the tree and shot him.

That winter he was on nighttime picket duty and he heard noises in the dark. He saw a German soldier who had "liberated" some wine and was wandering around drunk, he said that he would stumble over a rock, fall down, get up laughing and wander around some more, occasionally singing. He said had him in his sights, with the safety off and then had a change of heart, he said to me "That man was not a threat to me, he wasn't shooting at me, he didn't even have his rifle with him. Hell, that could've been me instead stumbling around, had I found that wine first." The German finally wandered away and fell asleep, apparently, and the rest of the night was spent trying to keep warm.

Charles MacDonald's "Company Commander" is one of the classic books of WW2. A segment covers captured prisoners and occurrence of those prisoners be shot while attempting to escape. Apparently this occurrence was dependent on the number of prisoners taken, GI individual temperament, and indifference of commanders.

My Grandmother had a cousin who served in Italy as an infantryman, and he told us a story one year when I was kid he was about 18 or 19 and heard a bunch of what he thought was talking in a shed.

he rasied up with his Thompson and sprayed the barn, and heard nothing but some moaining, he kicked open the door and found he shot up a bunch of geese.

That was all he said about the war.

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Stan

Take a look at the Philippine insurection 1900-1902 (and on where the Morros are concerned). And now, we like to think we're above it all-yet we firebombed Japan (and Germany). Dropped two atomic bombs. An untold number of civilians killed and injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A foot note: During WW2 the Netherlands defended its boarders about a week-capitulated and approx. 14000 Dutch men joined the Nazi SS-In the earley 1980's, at least you could not find a Dutchman who had served in the German Army.


War is a nasty dirty business...for everyone involved.

And every Frenchman was in the Resistance ;D

As a kid, my best friends Grandparents came to live with them. one summer. On a book shelf after they moved in I noticed a one-liter sized pewter stein with a crest engraved on it. When I asked what it was his Grandfather gently took it out of my hands and said that it was his Unit Stein, from when he was in The War. His grandparents were from Hungary and it was a few weeks before it dawned on me that his war was WW1, not WW2 which to my parents was The War. It was very hard to look at this jovial little man in a wool cap and think that once upon a time, to my Great Uncles, he was the Enemy.

I suspect this sort of thing was likely more commonplace than the history books are willing to admit...there are accounts of Canadian soldiers executing SS and even Wehrmacht prisoners out of hand following the discovery of the bodies of Canadian prisoners who had been shot in the back of the head at the Abbe Ardenne by 12th SS Panzer, Hitler Jugend, in Normandy.

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Don't know, don't care.

An interesting moment from the chaos of war. A couple of years ago, I had a veteran from the Scheldt Campaign (autumn 1944--to clear the Scheldt Estuary so Antwerp could be used as a supply centre) speak to my class about his experiences. He related a story about being in a small village with a Bren gun while watching 3 obviously very inebriated Wermacht regulars stumbling down the road towards him, bottle in hand and singing. The students thought this was pretty funny. Then, like a kid, he went "Brrrrrrrrraap!" while swinging his hand from left to right. He then very matter of factly stated that he "let them have it". Interestingly, he stated that he had no remorse...it was war, and if the tables had been turned it could just have easily have been him lying in the street.

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Don't know, don't care.

I think the answer here is that after declareing war would be to draft the politicans. The japanese had a nice trick where one would walk out with his hands in the air, then bow in surrender and his buddy behind him would try to man the lmg strapped to his back!

My father was there when that happened. He told me once that on the night of June 6 or 7, some of his friends went out on a patrol. Someone asked him if he wanted to come along and he said "no", but someone else said he'd go. They were all found the next day or so with their hands tied and they'd been shot.

The was some speculation that perhaps the little embroidered "black devil" on their uniform sleeves had caused them to be shot as Commandos under Hitler's "Fuehrer Order" that dictated that all special service troops and paratroopers were to be shot on the spot. Anyway, they knew it was the Hitler Jugend guys that did it. 64 Royal Winnipeg Rifles were shot in Normandy, according to the monument if I remember correctly in Winnipeg, from the 6th to the 8th, as prisoners. They all had the little devil embroidered on their uniform sleeves, because their unit was nicknamed the "little black devils". I grew up wearing that uniform playing soldiers, but now I believe it is on display in the Winnipeg Rifles Museum in Winnipeg. It went to the Museum after he died, but I was already living down here and have not seen it, although I have some photos of the display that were sent to me. When I told my father sometime in the '70's or '80's that the commander of that unit, Kurt Meyer, had supposedly been hung (according to some book I read at the time) after the war, Dad just said "he had it coming." Turns out, that information was actually wrong and Meyer's sentence was commuted to prison time. But at the time, I thought that they'd hung Meyer because this old book had said so. Probably just as well, because of me Dad believed that Meyer was hung and was happy with that. Had I had an Internet to fast-check my facts, I'd have had to tell him that Meyer got off with prison time and that would have upset the old man.

At about the age of 12 or 13, I watched the movie "The Battle of the Bulge" at the Brandon Drive-in with my dad. When they shot all the American prisoners, I cursed the Germans. My father commented that "the Germans weren't the only ones who shot prisoners."

Later in life, I asked my dad about the comment. He told me that after the executions of Canadian prisoners in Normandy, it was difficult for S.S. to surrender to the Winnipeg Rifles. I do not know if other Canadian Units had the same SOP, but I know from both my Dad's comments and books I have read that this was probably true of the RWR. I asked my Dad if he had ever shot any prisoners, and he hesitated a bit, then said; "No, I never did. But I did stand guard once at the end of a little lane while a couple of my friends took some of those Hitler Youth S.S. boys down the path to let them try to escape."

Dad was a virtual fountain of information about the war if you could pry it out of him, and I spent until the day he died working on it. Once, at the Brandon Strand Theatre watching "The Longest Day", when the scene where Hans Priller and his wingmen fly above the Sword and Juno beaches strafing the landing troops, my Dad leaned over to comment to me, but due to some latent emotion spoke rather loudly and said, "I saw him!" Later, when the movie ended, people sitting around us started asking Dad if he had been there, and he got his 15 minutes of fame as people came to shake his hand and just touch his arm or say something to him. He had a strange grin on his face the rest of the day.

Around 1978 or so, I finally read Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day" on which the movie was based. At the end of the book, it tells a little bit about what happened to the people featured in the book. Priller, the German airman, and his wingman had been well regarded in Germany for having flown above the invasion beaches. Probably the only German planes above the beaches that day. If I remember correctly, he got a job high up in Lufthansa or something, and took that wingman with him. I told my Dad about it, and his comment was, "Good, he deserved it. He was a brave man."

So Dad was not always predictable in the way he'd respond to things. He sure hated the S.S. though.

Photo; My Dad died in 1994. This photo of him is from about 1989, with the 1928/A1 Thompson he liked so much. (He used a Bren gun during the war.) The gun is now in the Evergreen Machine Gun museum in Belmont, Manitoba. I always used to tease him that he reminded me of Warren Oates in "Dillinger"...and you know, thinking about it...he just sorta did.

This is the best answer we'll probably get. After speaking with hundreds of WWII vets and discussing this topic, among many others, my impression was that in some units, there was a high moral ethic and it was highly punished if you took the discretion to shoot prisoners, while in other units, leaders had either an "I don't care" or encouraging policy towards the practice. Whatever the attitude of the commander, it, of course, filtered down to the troops, as many/all leadership qualities do.

And, of course, situations will dictate certain necessities as well as the attitude of the front-line troops.

My uncle served in the 90th Infantry Division in Europe, and most of his memories of the war are grim and painful to him. He told me that after he watched his best friends head disintegrate from suffering a direct hit from an anti-tank gun, while his friend was less than 20' away from him, one's emotions of anguish for friends skyrocket while one's humanity for the enemy disappears.

"meet with Sobel's sister and express their thanks."? A thanks for what? Sobel didn't come off too well in Band of Brothers. Incidentally, whatever happened to him?

Bad things happen in war.

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Only a cold warrior

Interesting. After WWII a lot of German soldiers served with the French Foreign Legion in French Indo China (Later Vietnam). The French executed any SS they found trying to join. They checked them for SS tattoos. When I was in the Corps and Korea we had former German soldiers who had volunteered. One was a former sargeant and a good friend of mine, another was something else. He was authorized to wear the Iron Cross on his Marine uniform that he had received for destroying 3 Sherman tanks. He used to brag about the exploits during WWII. Sadly, he did not survive Korea. Did I say sadly? We had some WWII veterans in Korea, some who had served in the U.S. Army before going into the Marine Corps.

I don't know who made that decision. This Kraut was thoroughly 100% German, and unfortunately, for him NOT liked.

Really? I am guessing that decision didn't come from high up in the chain of command. (To say that I am incredulous is an understatement.)

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Only a cold warrior

I've had several conversations with Jakeway as well. He was in the same Company of the 82nd as my cousin and knew my cousin well. Quite an interesting guy. My cousin died during Market Garden, earning the Silver Star.

I know of one particular gentleman who was assigned to guard three prisoners after his unit had taken a small village. The Germans counter attacked and he was told he was needed on the line and to take care of the prisoners. He couldn't just let them go as they knew the (small) number and disposition of his unit's troops, and he couldn't risk leaving them tied up in their rear. So he took care of them. It was a cruddy deal for the prisoners, but sometimes that's just how it is.

It was a cruddy deal for him as well. Technically, it was a war crime. In reality it's one of those ethical dilemmas that troops in combat face in the real world.

----

While we're on the subject, it's also a war crime to shoot prisoners who are attempting to surrender. As soon as they throw up their hands or try to surrender, they become non-combatants.

I genuinely believe that time stands still on this forum, or maybe when we log-in there is a blip in the space/time continuum, or maybe it acts as a portal or time machine. It never ceases to amaze me how we can go seamlessly from February 4, 2010 (Post 36) to today (post 37) like the past decade never happened!

I think the quality of the posts and subjects here are perhaps timeless.

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Possum—The other white meat!

My father was drafted into Wehrmacht in June 1944 and captured by the Americans near Metz in October, 1944. He told me that the Americans tended to treat the regular German army soldiers well but not the SS. He wouldn't talk about the front lines but he would open up about the POW camp. One story he told had an SS soldier trying to hide in among other POWs in their barracks. The Germans actually ratted the SS guy out. Three Army MPs came into the barracks and drug the SS man out and took him just out of sight. Then he received 45 a.c.p. justice. Gave the prisoners something to think about.

About a year ago I was looking through some Life Magazine archives when I found some pictures by well known war photographer Ralph Morse titled "The Fall of Metz." The second to last picture showed German POWs being marched off to the POW camp. On the front row, second from the right holding his coat's lapels is my father, what luck!!! Emailed the picture to my 82 year old cousin Ilse in Germany who lived with my father's family before and after the war and she said there was no doubt it was my dad.

Attached Images

german POWs Metz.jpg (83.8 KB, 360 views)

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LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

Seems one episode Band of Brothers it was said he shot them in the legs but it has been a while since I've watched it . My dad was in Battle of the Bulge and told very few Germans taken prisoner after US soldiers were massacred, he also had never ending stories and nightmares till he passed 2004

There was an old German gentleman in our church who was drafted into the Wehrmacht and captured at the end of the war. He came to the US in the late 1940s, and was asked if he would serve in the US military if called. Thinking it just a formality, he agreed, and a few years later found himself drafted into the US Army and in Korea.

Interesting fellow to talk with.

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John

There was a soldier in US Special Forces (later killed in Vietnam) who served in the “SS” against the Russians during WWII. His name was Lauri Torni and he was a fine soldier (according to my friends who knew him) and was a Captain at the time of his death.
He had been awarded the Iron Cross during service in WWII but I’m quite sure was never allowed to wear it on his US uniform. He was Finnish and hated the Russians.

If you look closely at the BOB scene in question, at one point the prisoners are Heer troops. Then they are SS. Some type of message there?

Sobel killed himself after the war.

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No baby we aint

I first learned of this story here, in this tread. TIP OF THE SPEAR

Anyone who doubts the old saying that the truth is stranger than fiction, need only to google and read about this man.

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Possum—The other white meat!

It was a desperate time.

Prisoners, especially in the first few actions, were a liability.