HISTORY OF VETERAN'S DAY: TRIBUTE

Originally called Armistice Day, November 11, 1918 commemorated the day the 
Germans signed the Armistice in the Forest of Compiegne ending World War I 
after 4 years of fighting. In October 1954, President Eisenhower changed 
the day to Veteran's Day following an Act of Congress previously that year 
as a way to honor servicemen of all America's wars.

The close of the epic HBO miniseries about World War II "Band of Brothers" 
coincides with Veteran's Day. Following is the story of an ordinary soldier 
who did an extraordinary thing. It is the story of my father.


See it at the HBO web site by clicking on this link, or read the story below.

http://www.hbo.com/NASApp/band/site/client/stories/curated_story.jsp?exid=638

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Staff Sergeant John N. Petro: Liberator 

During WWII my father crossed paths a couple of times I with the Company E
mentioned in "Band of Brothers". Once at the Battle of the Bulge and later while
liberating the death camp Dachau. I'll relate here the story of the liberation. 

My father was in Company E, but the one in the 232nd Infantry Regiment of the 42
"Rainbow" Division and had seen a lot of action during the war. As part of the
7th Army, they passed through France in 1944 and were the first of their corps
to  enter Germany in March of 1945. Being the first to penetrate the Seigfried
line at the German frontier and first into Munich, my father captured the Nazi
general in charge of the German anti-aircraft artillery outside of Munich.
"Stars and Stripes" could not attribute the capture to a lowly sergeant, when
the story was published it was credited to a higher ranking US officer, but I
still have the general's surrendered pistol, a Sauer and Sohn 7.65 mm side arm. 
But nothing he had seen so far prepared him for what he saw at Dachau.
Buchenwald was the first camp liberated. When General Eisenhower visited there
he vomited. 

When Dachau was liberated, it was much worse than Buchenwald. On April 29, 1945,
when they fought their way and finally made it through the gate, my father said
that he watched his commanders vomit when they saw what had happened at the
camp. The smell of death was overwhelming. The liberated looked like the dead.
"They were skeletons," he told me. Initially, the liberated thought they were
dreaming. They could not believe it was true that after so long, they were
finally being liberated. Dachau held about 32,000 prisoners. 

My father left me the photos he took during the liberation. I still have the
photos of those who survived, who looked like "living skeletons." I also have
photos of the skeletons of those who did not survive, of the open train boxcars
with bodies piled high. There were some 40 boxcars outside the camp with about
2,000 dead. 

May it never happen again. 


	Bill Petro 
	www.billpetro.com