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(wind whistling) (machine gun fire) (machine gun fire continues) (men shouting) (shouting) (wind whistling) RAY LEOPOLD: In the process of this battle, we took about 18 or 19 German prisoners.

A young man approximately 24 years of age turned to me, and in a voice completely accent-free, he said, "Where are you from?"

I said, "I'm from the United States."

"Where in the United States?"

"The Northeast," I said.

"Where Northeast?"

I said, "I'm from Connecticut."

"Where in Connecticut?"

He was persisting.

I said, "Yes, I'm from Waterbury, Connecticut."

"Ah, yes," he said, "Waterbury, at the junction of the Naugatuck and Mad Rivers."

Now, you have to know a bit about the area.

The Naugatuck is a fairly substantial river, but the Mad River is a little stream that you can jump across without any trouble.

Anyone who knew this...

I was puzzled.

I said, "How did you possibly know that?"

He said, "I was in training for the administration."

"The administration of what?"

I said.

He said, "The administration of the territories."

My blood ran cold.

I couldn't imagine that Hitler-- in his wildest imagination-- not only had figured he practically had Europe in his grasp, but he also figured that he would control America, too.

(wind whistling) (distant artillery explosions) PAUL FUSSELL: You had no possessions at all.

You would cut everything down to the simplest, because you had to carry everything.

When we were marching from one horror to another, I had shoepacks on because the ground was always wet or frozen.

I had two pairs of woolen socks.

In my pockets I carried probably a couple of, uh... boxes of K-rations.

I never had a toothbrush at all.

I didn't take a shower for six months.

No change of underwear at all.

No change of clothes at all for months.

And I had a sleeping bag which I carried with a rope over my shoulder like a tramp.

And, uh, that's all I had.

NARRATOR: More than 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during the war.

The vast majority of them never saw serious combat.

The infantry represented just 14% of the troops overseas.

But wherever they fought-- in North Africa or the South Pacific or Western Europe-- the infantry bore the brunt of the fighting on the ground and suffered seven out of ten casualties.

And they endured hardships and horrors for which no training could ever have prepared them.

BURNETT MILLER: You know, you get hardened to it.

I stayed in a hole for an hour and a half or something like that-- it seemed like that anyway-- with a dead German.

And it's kind of an eerie feeling.

Uh, but you're so worried, really, about yourself at that time that you didn't think too much about it.

But you get really hardened to seeing a lot of gruesome sights.

And that worries you as much as anything.

You think, "My gosh.

"I saw so-and-so get killed today "and then he got run over by a tank and just a horrible mess and it didn't bother me at all."

But about a week after the war ended, I saw an automobile accident and I got sick as I normally would before the war.

NARRATOR: By December of 1944, Americans were growing weary of the war their young men had been fighting for three long years.

In Europe, it was supposed to be over by now.

The generals who had directed the fighting from far behind the lines had been predicting victory for months.

It had not happened.

In the Pacific, American progress had been slow and costly.

The enemy showed no sign of giving up.

And on a tiny volcanic island called Iwo Jima, the Marines would face still another terrible test.

For the people of Luverne, Minnesota, and Waterbury, Connecticut, Sacramento, California, and Mobile, Alabama, and every other town struggling to absorb it all, the stream of telegrams and newspaper headlines telling of new losses seemed endless and unendurable.

For their sons overseas it was, of course, far worse.

(explosions) For them there was no option but to fight on and try to stay alive.

Ray Leopold, a mortgage broker from Waterbury, who had been trained to kill people, would find himself trying to save them instead.

Burnett Miller, the only child of a prosperous Sacramento family, would be caught up in the biggest-- and least expected-- battle on the Western Front.

Quentin Aanenson of Luverne, who had dealt out death from the air, would now encounter it close up, on the ground.

And 11-year-old Sascha Weinzheimer, a prisoner of the Japanese, whose fondest dream was that her world might simply return to normal, would have the happiest day of her life.

TOM GALLOWAY: Basically, getting shot at or shelled is just plain scary.

You just hope that, uh... it misses you.

When the artillery's coming in, you think, "Oh, God, it's covering such an area and I hope it doesn't hit me."

We would wish they'd just start using rifles, you know?

Well, when you get to where a bullet whizzes by your head... you know that's personal... (laughs) you know?

You better get out of the way.

NARRATOR: Since the summer of 1944, Hitler had been secretly planning a massive counterattack, an all-out attempt to divide and destroy the Allied armies before they could move further into Germany.

His target would be the Ardennes-- rolling forested hills in Belgium and Luxembourg through which German troops had advanced toward France twice before, in 1914 and again in 1940.

It was now thinly defended.

His armies were to break through the unsuspecting Americans, race for Antwerp, cut off the British army in the north and drive it into the sea.

Most of Hitler's commanders thought it madness.

They had lost nearly four million men since the war began.

They had too little fuel for a major mechanized advance.

The once-mighty Luftwaffe had largely been destroyed.

But Hitler was implacable.

"The coming battle," he said, would decide "whether we shall live or die."

Every able-bodied German male between the ages of 16 and 60 was made eligible for service.

25 new divisions, called "the people's infantry," were formed-- 250,000 fresh troops-- convicts and the infirm, old men and young boys, and conscripts from occupied countries who didn't speak a word of German.

Preparations for the attack would take time and demanded utter secrecy.

Hitler would not launch it until he was certain winter weather and dense fog would keep Allied aircraft on the ground.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Tom Galloway of Mobile and his division were among the American troops who happened to be stationed in the Ardennes.

GALLOWAY: We were in Luxembourg rebuilding after Hürtgen Forest, because the losses were kind of heavy.

There, like we had a front, the division had a front of some 20 miles.

Well, because it was a quiet area and nothing was going to happen, I fired 25 rounds a day.

I'd go up in the morning and fire just one at the time, just to let them know we were there.

(Duke Ellington's "Solitude" playing) NARRATOR: There were only four U.S. infantry divisions in the Ardennes-- 80,000 men, stretched out along a front that ran some 80 miles from north to south.

Two of the divisions had seen little combat.

The other two-- the Fourth and Galloway's 28th-- had been battered by weeks of desperate fighting in the Hürtgen Forest and had been sent to the Ardennes to rest.

Ray Leopold, of Waterbury, was serving with the 28th, too.

He had been trained as a sniper.

LEOPOLD: We were in a place called Malmedy-St. Vith, at a little place called Sevenig Hill.

You could put one foot in France, one foot in Belgium, and spit into Germany at this particular spot.

NARRATOR: One frosty morning, after several hours of guard duty, Leopold stood up to stretch.

A German sniper shot him in the left thigh.

(gunshot, soft thud) As chance would have it, I had picked up a German medic's kit a couple of days before, lying in the field.

And I doctored my own wound, because our own medic had been killed.

And, with the German equipment, I probed for the bullet.

I extracted it.

I cleansed the wound.

I doctored it myself.

Two days later, when I got to battalion aid station, the captain looked at the wound and said, "This is wonderful.

Who did it?"

I told him that I had.

He then told me, "Leopold, I have a propositisition for yo.

I'm going to make you a medic."

I, thereafter, never carried a gun.

(soft thud) MAN: Strike!

(men cheering) NARRATOR: For the most part, the war seemed a long way away from the Ardennes, and the men took full advantage of the facilities for rest and recreation.

Life there was so quiet, so uneventful, that some of the men called it the "ghost front."

MARLENE DIETRICH: ♪ Outside the barracks, by corner light ♪ ♪ I'll always stand and wait for you at night ♪ ♪ We will create a world for two ♪ ♪ I'll wait for you the whole night through ♪ ♪ For you, Lili Marlene ♪ ♪ For you, Lili Marlene.

♪ (accordion and orchestra playing interlude) ♪ It's you ♪ ♪ Lili Marlene.

♪ NARRATOR: But just a few miles to the east, hidden beneath the trees, Hitler's army was making the final preparations for its surprise attack.

There were signs that something was going on.

Civilians slipped through the lines to report growing numbers of German troops.

Spotter planes noted hospital trains and massive Tiger tanks loaded on flatcars.

At night, GIs heard the distant rumble of motors.

GALLOWAY: I did know that roads would not have snow on them in the morning, which meant there was traffic on those roads at night.

Report it, but I didn't put any significance to it.

NARRATOR: Allied headquarters paid little attention.

General Omar Bradley remained convinced the German army had been wrecked.

Then, at 5:30 a.m. on December 16, thousands of guns opened up.

The shells fell on and around the American positions for an hour.

(clamoring shouts) A few moments later, the enemy began to emerge out of the dense fog that shrouded the forest.

(rapid automatic gunfire) (soldiers shouting) And, uh, of course, the Bulge broke right there.

And, as I say, when they fired the first round, it darn near hit me.

From then on, it got worse.

(artillery explosions) But, uh... they came barreling over there, and, uh... just right into us.

NARRATOR: 20 German infantry divisions were moving forward along a 50-mile front-- a quarter of a million men.

Behind them roared 600 tanks.

LEOPOLD: On the adjoining ridge, which was only a half-mile from us, sitting up as bold as brass, several German tanks in line, with the driver sitting in his black uniform, were coming down paths that could not, in our opinion, possibly have taken a tank.

Footpaths.

But there it was.

The gigantic tanks, with their 88-mm guns, were coming down this path in single file.

GALLOWAY: You just had waves of Germans coming at you.

We had one machine gun just mowing them down.

They'd keep coming right down the road, right into that machine gun.

But there were waves of them.

NARRATOR: The Germans kept coming at the Americans, pushing them back or flowing around them.

As Hitler had hoped, thick clouds and ground fog kept Allied warplanes out of the sky.

Some men simply fled.

Surrounded by the enemy, cut off from one another, out of ammunition and unable to fight back, others were forced to surrender-- more than 10,000 men.

Most struggled to hold on.

Clerks and truck drivers who had never fired a carbine found themselves in combat.

Some officers acted like traffic cops, trying to restore order to the chaos on the clogged roads.

GALLOWAY: At, uh, one point I'm there and I'm trying to figure out tactics.

And to be perfectly honest, I figured, as a junior officer in the artillery I'd be a forward observer and I didn't have to worry about tactics too much.

As it ended up, here I am in charge and trying to say, "Why did you sleep through tactics?"

and, uh...

It makes you think.

NARRATOR: The Germans continued to advance.

On December 17, an SS panzer unit ambushed an American convoy near a tiny village called Malmedy, captured and disarmed 150 men, and then gunned down at least 86 of them.

They also butchered scores of Belgian civilians.

News of the killing spread fast among the embattled Americans.

LEOPOLD: Archie Costran was the first sergeant of our outfit.

Came up to me within the hour with word of what had happened at the Malmedy massacre only two miles away from us.

He said, "If you are captured and identified as Jewish, you will not live."

He said, "Ray, why don't you do what I'm doing?

"Take your dog tags, with its big letter 'H' on it, "wrap it around your hand, put your glove back on.

If, by chance, you're ever forced to surrender," he said, "as you raise your hand, throw the glove, together with the dog tag, into the snow and step on it."

For 12 days, my hand had the dog tag wrapped around it.

NARRATOR: The Germans succeeded in smashing through the center and spreading out to create a 50-mile salient, a "bulge" in the Allied line.

The Americans managed to keep the breakthrough from widening by holding on to two villages-- St. Vith to the north and Bastogne in the south.

GALLOWAY: The unit tightened up, and we held... (rapid automatic gunfire) Until... we had about a day, two days, and then we had to start dropping back.

So we'd drop back and fire, drop back and fire.

At that time I didn't know it, but apparently we were trying to protect Bastogne.

I had never heard of Bastogne.

I didn't know there was such a place, but we were trying to protect Bastogne.

NARRATOR: The little town commanded seven all-weather roads.

Keeping the Germans from gaining control of those roads was now the Allies' highest priority.

GALLOWAY: I was asked to go out and ride recon, and that was a mistake.

And I reported that, uh... German tanks were coming, and I could hear them speaking, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

so, uh, I had to back up.

NARRATOR: But it was too late.

Tom Galloway and his men were surrounded.

They hid in a house.

GALLOWAY: They brought a tank up, shot that house up pretty bad.

NARRATOR: Left with no other option, Galloway surrendered.

Well, you never think you're going to get caught.

You think, "It's not going to happen to me."

NARRATOR: He and some of his fellow captives were sent deep inside Germany to a prison camp 40 miles east of Frankfurt.

Meanwhile, the 101st Airborne was ordered to hold Bastogne until other reinforcements could reach the Ardennes.

While elements of the First Army drove south toward the forest, General George Patton's Third Army began a headlong rush north to try to relieve Bastogne before the enemy could take it.

The Germans encircled the town and began to shell it.

(frenzied shouting) The surrounded Americans began running out of ammunition, food... medicine.

(shell whizzing, exploding) On December 22, German officers under a white flag approached the American commander at Bastogne, General Anthony McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne.

The Americans' situation was hopeless, they said.

The town was surrounded.

They demanded the Americans surrender.

McAuliffe had a one-word answer: "Nuts!"

The Germans had no idea what he meant, but they returned to their lines and the shelling started again.

But the next morning, the skies cleared and were quickly filled with Allied planes, bombing and strafing German armor and dropping supplies and ammunition to the besieged Americans.

They were still surrounded, still cut off from help on the ground, but now at least they had food to eat and ammunition with which to shoot back.

And they were fast becoming a symbol back home... of American resistance.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS: The Battle of the Bulge was publicized.

We knew they were holding out in Bastogne.

And we were all cheering them on.

Again, we know now how dreadful it was, but we were very conscious of the Battle of the Bulge, because we felt like we had just about completed that campaign in Europe.

And when this counterattack came, it came as a blow to the entire nation.

("Silent Night" playing) PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT: It is not easy to say "Merry Christmas" to you, my fellow Americans, in this time of destructive war.

Nor can I say "Merry Christmas" lightly tonight to our armed forces at their battle stations all over the world.

NARRATOR: General Eisenhower, as surprised as anyone by the success of the German advance, nevertheless saw the opportunity embedded in the crisis.

The Germans were on the offensive for the first time since Normandy, but that meant they were exposed and could be themselves surrounded and cut off.

On Christmas Day, 30 miles west of Bastogne, the Americans stopped the German advance.

The following day, American tanks broke through the German lines and linked up with the 101st Airborne inside Bastogne.

The men there celebrated a belated Christmas, despite the shells and bombs that continued to fall around them and the fighting that lay ahead.

("O Holy Night" playing) (artillery exploding) (men shouting) SASCHA WEINZHEIMER (dramatized): "I am making "a few Christmas gifts for Buddy and Doris "and bookmarks for all my friends.

"Mother said it was best to forget it this year, "but we can't, on account of the little kids.

"She told them, because of the antiaircraft guns in Manila, "Uncle Sam told Santa to keep away this year and leave his gifts for the kids in San Francisco."

(shells whistling) (explosions) "When you stop and think how hard our boys are fighting for us, I guess we can take it, too."

"But just a little more rice would be all I can ask for.

"We always picture Opa and Oma on their farm in California.

"If they only knew how hungry we are, "they would be very sad.

"I guess even when we tell them, they will never, ever believe it."

Sascha Weinzheimer.

NARRATOR: The grandparents Sascha Weinzheimer called Opa and Oma lived in the Sacramento Valley.

Her grandfather blamed himself for his family's captivity in the Philippines.

When they'd asked to go home in the weeks before Pearl Harbor, he'd insisted they stay where they were, certain there would be no war.

Once he knew they had been imprisoned, he had tried to get messages and Red Cross packages to them month after month.

His health began to fail.

My dad walked me to the main building for my siesta because the camp shut down, um, for three hours in the heat of the day.

("O Little Town of Bethlehem" playing) So he stopped at the desk, and they said, "Oh, we have a Red Cross telegram for you."

It was from my grandmother.

And it said my grandfather... he had passed eight months prior... and we were just getting it.

He stood there and cried, and then walked me up to my room.

Everybody told us that my grandfather literally died of a broken heart.

NARRATOR: That evening, the family did its best to celebrate the holiday.

They made a tree out of a palm branch stuck in a tin can filled with dirt and lined up at the canteen with the other prisoners for a special treat-- two tablespoons of jam and one bite of chocolate.

Sascha thought it all delicious, even though "there were tiny white worms in the chocolate."

During the night, American planes could be heard overhead again and scores of leaflets fluttered out of the dark sky-- Christmas greetings from the troops fighting their way across the Philippines toward Manila... toward them.

BURT WILSON: I became a Sacramento Bee ne ws carrier at the age of ten, and for me, the war was that little square map on the front page where it showed wavy lines moving in some direction, and then the next day you'd see them move a little more, and arrows pointed here and there where different armies were going.

And then, all of a sudden, there was this bulge in the map that was going back the other way.

That was the Battle of the Bulge.

And, my God, what's happening here?

Are we losing now that we're this close?

We all took it seriously because... the lines had moved the other way.

(distant shouting and artillery explosions) OLLIE STEWART (dramatized): "This is being written "on the verge of the New Year, "when all along the Western Front "the outcome still remains in doubt.

"When German parachutists were known "to have been dropped behind American lines "dressed in American uniforms, it became necessary "to demand identification papers from everybody.

"But with colored troops, it was only a matter of form, "since the Germans have no known colored soldiers.

"I was halted times, but my face was my best identification."

Ollie Stewart, The Baltimore Afro-American.

(shouting, rapid gunfire) (wind whistling) BURNETT MILLER: I think that we went to have a great experience.

And all of a sudden we were having more of a great experience than we really had reckoned for.

We were scared to death, of course.

NARRATOR: Burnett Miller of Sacramento, who had been raised a few blocks from where Burt Wilson lived, was a private in the 21st Armored Infantry Battalion, 11th Armored Division.

He was among the thousands of American troops ordered into the Ardennes to relieve Bastogne and drive the Germans back.

It would be Miller's first real taste of war.

MILLER: We crossed France, went through parts of Belgium and hit the Bulge in a big snowstorm.

Our vehicles became almost inoperable.

(artillery explosions) (clamoring shouts) And the tanks, one after another, were blown up, and we could see dead tankers and wounded tankers running for cover all over the place.

That was not a pretty sight.

We bailed out of these tracks and started running through the snow to get some kind of coverage... ...and actually retreated back up onto a hill, dug in and spent that night in a big snowstorm.

We were wet, and I thought, "Boy, I don't think we can make it."

(shell explodes) And that night there were tracer bullets all over-- lots of artillery-- very, very scary.

And you'd rationalize things, like nothing worse can happen but getting killed.

But there... there were things worse than being killed.

(somber blues music playing) NARRATOR: In the Ardennes, the fighting and the dying went on.

It was the coldest winter in memory.

Many men were without winter boots or winter coats.

Thousands lost fingers, toes or feet to frostbite.

MILLER: Lots of our equipment wasn't very good.

We always had frozen feet because our shoes were really very, very poor.

Also, you know, we went to, into combat in the Bulge in the same overcoats we went to London in and they were big, bulky, miserable things that would get wet.

And pretty soon we were looking for German prisoners or German dead.

They had nice, white, bunny fur jackets that were just terrific, not only comfortable and warm, but were white and camouflaged.

HERNDON INGE: Morale, I thought, kept up because you were with people.

That as long as you were with other GIs in the snow and in the misery, if you had somebody next to you, you figured, "Well, they can handle it, I can handle it."

You just, uh... keep moving ahead.

(artillery whizzing, exploding) (men shouting) (soldiers shouting) NARRATOR: In the chaotic fighting that followed, some towns changed hands four times.

Civilians hid in cellars as their homes were destroyed above them.

Allied troops had to recapture the ground they had lost inch by frozen inch, sometimes reoccupying foxholes they'd been forced from just a few weeks earlier.

(men shouting, explosions) The Americans lost an average of 1,600 men a day.

Among the dead were Private John Tavera of Sacramento, Corporal Lester Bendt of Luverne, Private First Class Domenic DeRosimo of Waterbury and Private First Class Jesse Leon Hattenstien of Mobile.

(shell whizzes, explodes) Those who were killed and wounded were replaced by thousands of green troops-- mostly high-school boys-- who had been rushed through basic training.

(gunfire) Many replacements died before officers could learn their names and were replaced by still more frightened newcomers.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS: I had a friend who claimed he was sent into the Battle of the Bulge with six weeks' training and a new rifle.

Graylap said if he had not been shootin' squirrels all his life, he would have been completely lost.

But he shot the Germans like he would squirrels and that was it.

NARRATOR: Some officers ordered their men to take no German prisoners.

The memory of the massacre of American troops at Malmedy remained fresh.

MILLER: We had been held up at a little town.

We were supposed to just walk through it, and the Germans stopped us dead.

We just couldn't crack it.

Fire!

Eventually artillery came in... sort of leveled the houses.

They finally surrendered, and they came out and sort of lined up and per usual, no one knew what was going on.

(men shouting) We had a new battalion commander, just graduated from West Point, and he lined 'em up and said, "I want you to shoot 'em."

And I was horrified.

Quite a few of us were horrified.

And I went to him and told him, you know, that this was against all international law and humanity.

My good buddy, who I'd spent so much time with, grabbed me and said, "This nut'll shoot you.

You better quit... knock this off, and..." And he got enough guys and they shot these about 25 prisoners.

It was a terrible thing to see, and I talked to a lot of my buddies who had shot these guys and they were horrified, too.

(wind whistling) NARRATOR: By January 30, 1945, six weeks after the German offensive in the Ardennes began, six weeks after the start of the Battle of the Bulge, the Allies had finally managed to regain all the ground they'd lost.

It had been the biggest battle of the war on the Western Front.

More than a million men took part.

19,000 Americans died.

60,000 more had been wounded or captured or listed as missing.

Hitler's enormous gamble had ended in disaster.

He had lost some 100,000 men and virtually all his tanks and aircraft and now had no way of replacing them.

(explosions) And in the east, the Russian army was blasting its way closer to Berlin every day.

(explosions) LEOPOLD: They had blown up our chow truck.

So these big aluminum cans that contained the variety of food they had were spaced about 40, 50 feet apart.

If a shell came in, it would only kill one or two men, instead of groups of us if we were all blocked together.

We walked down the line slowly and opened up our mess kits and in the big pan of your mess kit, the first man placed two pieces of toast.

The second man put a nice half-inch-thick piece of magnificent roast beef covering most of the toast.

The third man a ladle of gravy over all of it.

Everything was fine.

The next man gave us a scoopful of reconstituted dried peas and carrots.

It was proper.

It was good.

It was on one side.

And finally we came to the end of the line.

And the end of the line, the man reached in and took a great big scoop of chocolate pudding and covered this magnificent roast beef from one side to the other with chocolate pudding.

I don't know how many of you have ever had chocolate pudding roast beef.

But I can tell you, despite this fact-- despite the insult that must have come to this beautiful piece of meat-- we loved every single bite.

I still remember chocolate-flavored roast beef.

(airplane engines droning) NARRATOR: On January 8, an American plane had flown low over Santo Tomas prison camp in Manila and dropped new leaflets.

They, too, were addressed to the people of the Philippines.

"General MacArthur has returned," they said.

"He will tell you over the radio, "in proclamation and leaflet, "exactly how and when you can help.

Watch closely for these instructions."

SASCHA WEINZHEIMER (dramatized): "Gosh!

"Maybe soon we can sing 'God Bless America' out loud.

"Maybe we can see our flag flying again.

"What a thrill it will be when our first boys come through that gate."

(piano playing "God Bless America") "Mother says we fought this war, too... like soldiers.

"People are dying every day from starvation.

"Fred Fairman and Mrs. Everett yesterday.

"We have such a short time to go.

"What a pity they couldn't hang on to life just a while longer.

"Mother weighs only 73 pounds.

"She used to weigh 148.

"And Dr. Allen says she has to stay in bed from now on because she can't walk."

SASCHA WEINZHEIMER: When I'd get bouts of really severe hunger-- it comes over you like waves-- and then I'd do something to distract me.

Like drumming on the side of the shanty, or making noise, or even go screaming a little bit, just to get it out of your system, and then I'd go on.

But the kids would cry... and grab their throat, or they'd grab their belly and go up to my mother.

That... that probably was a very bad thing, you know, to see your kids do.

WEINZHEIMER (dramatized): "January 17.

"Buddy's favorite expression is, 'Let's talk about food.'

"He has a favorite suit, too, which he calls his 'Gate' suit.

"He's been taking this suit out almost every day for months, "putting it on the bed and saying, "'I'll put my Gate things right here, Mummy, "so I can be ready.'

"All of us have something saved to wear out the gate.

"All of us except Daddy, "who has been barefooted now for six months.

"'I don't need a thing for the gate except two good legs to walk out with,' he said."

"February 1.

"This morning, Auntie Bee came to visit.

"She works in the hospital.

"She says the doctors expect seven more to die today, all from starvation."

DANIEL INOUYE: To me, the real heroes of the war were those who very seldom get medals.

They're the medics.

Whenever a man gets injured, he very, very seldom calls out for his sweetheart or his mother.

First thing he calls out is the medic.

He always says, "Medic!"

And whenever that word is heard, the medic rushes over.

And to rush over, he is just dodging bullets.

That takes guts.

(rapid artillery fire) (men shouting) LEO GOLDBERG: Munitions are a terrible thing.

It tears a person apart.

It's not a clean cut.

It tears.

It rips.

I can't imagine what the medics went through.

You know, they were right there, and they were patching people up who were bleeding to death.

So my heart goes out to those boys.

NARRATOR: Medics were paid ten dollars less per month than the men they tried to save.

Many were pacifists and conscientious objectors, unwilling to take lives, but willing to risk their own lives to save others.

Like the men they tended, they learned to improvise in combat.

During the Battle of the Bulge, they kept morphine and plasma inside their shorts to keep it from freezing.

In the Pacific, some dyed the red crosses on their helmets green to make themselves less likely targets for the Japanese.

And everywhere, they were forced to make terrible choices.

LEOPOLD: If you're in a firefight and you see a party that is wounded in a way that you know he cannot survive, you must pass him by, even though he may be calling to you for help, and you must doctor somebody whose life you potentially can save.

And it's a terrible decision you have to make to pass somebody by who is in need of comfort but is not going to live.

It's never pleasant to do the work of a medic.

But it's one of the essentials of civilized behavior.

NARRATOR: There were some wounds no medic could treat.

(film projector clacking) What were you afraid of?

Everything.

What in particular?

Dead.

What?

Dead.

Dead what?

Dead people.

I can't... stand seeing them.

I can't hear you.

I can't stand seeing dead people.

NARRATOR: There were many names for it-- "shell shock," "battle fatigue," "combat exhaustion."

One out of four of all the Army men evacuated for medical reasons in Europe and the Pacific suffered from some form of neuropsychiatric disorder.

(shell explodes) (rapid artillery fire) Army planners determined that the average soldier could withstand no more than 240 days of combat without going mad.

(rapid artillery fire, men shouting) By that time, though, the average soldier was more than likely dead or wounded.

(insects chittering) (jaunty piano jazz playing) NAT KING COLE: ♪ Knock me a kiss, you'll never miss ♪ ♪ When I'm ready to go ♪ ♪ But if you can't smile and say yes ♪ ♪lease don't cry and say no ♪ ♪ Squeeze me a squoze in these fine clothes ♪ ♪ Mmm...

I love you so ♪ ♪ But if you can't smile and say yes ♪ ♪ Please don't cry and say no.

♪ DOLORES SILVA: During that time, they had a lot of pinup girls.

Betty Grable had a picture of herself in her bathing suit, and she's glancing back over her shoulder.

And it's a back view and, oh, it was gorgeous.

So I says, "My Norman is going to have his own pinup picture.

And I had a red and white polka-dot bikini.

But you could either wear it low, if you had enough nerve to do it, or you could wear it all the way to the top.

Well, anyway, I put on my red and white bikini, and went out in the backyard, and I gave my mother my camera.

I says, "Here.

Take a picture.

"I want to send it to Norman.

I'm going to be his pinup girl."

And he carried that through the war with him, and he said that he received a lot of comments from his buddies when they saw that picture, because after some of them saw it, they says, well, they looked at him, and they looked back at the picture and they looked at him again, and they says, "What does she see in you?"

(laughs) And I had a picture of him on my desk-- one that he took in France-- so I was with him, and he was with me.

SAM HYNES: The best joke I remember about the war, uh... was not a joke that was told, but that one saw.

I think it was on Eniwetok, in the, uh... in the Officers' Club bar.

Above the bar, uh... there was, uh... an enormous brassiere, as I remember, mounted on a board like a tarpon.

And underneath, it said, "Remember Pearl Olson."

(men shouting) SASCHA WEINZHEIMER (dramatized): "February 3, 1945.

"At about 5:00 last night, "ten of our planes came over our camp.

One pilot dropped his goggles with a note tied to them."

"It fell in the main building patio "where there weren't any Nips, "and a lucky friend of ours found it "because we found out right away what it said: "'Roll out the barrel!

"Your Christmas will be here today or tomorrow.'

"Shortly we heard guns and tanks in the distance.

"Everyone thought it must be the Japs, except Daddy.

He was sure it was the Americans."

(gunfire) The liberation was the most exciting thing in my life.

And if I cry, you'll forgive me.

So on the third of February, my father walked me to the main building.

But while we were walking, we heard these big rumblings in the distance.

And usually when that happened, we could, all right, we had trained ears by this point.

We knew it was the big bombers coming overhead.

But as we walked, we noticed the... it was, the noise was getting louder and louder, but there was no planes appearing.

And we thought that was weird.

And people were coming out of their shacks and saying, "Gee!

Isn't... this is a different thing."

Fire!

(gunfire) And we heard guns going off.

The Brits were saying, "Oh, it's the Brits!

"The Brits are coming!

They're here!

The Limeys are here!"

And the Americans said, "Don't be silly.

This is the Americans coming."

So, we were doing... rushing back and forth, and because of the fire, the firing and the noise, people were just running around, you know?

They weren't staying put.

All of a sudden-- and it was, we didn't know this till later-- it was, like, three minutes to 9:00 in the evening, they came through, crashed through the front gates with their tanks.

And it was wonderful.

People went crazy.

You'd think the war was over, but it wasn't.

My mother was bedridden at 73 pounds.

My mother always said, "Now, let's always keep one item to wear when our boys come in."

So she had a half-eaten lipstick.

I had something, I forgot, a sock, which is now, you know, no shoes, there's no point in wearing a sock.

My sister had a clip, a barrette.

And so when my father picked up my mother and ran out of the shanty, she says, "Wait!

Wait!"

So he couldn't understand why.

She said, "Go back."

So she reached underneath her mattress and pulled out her lipstick and put it on.

She said, "Now I'm ready for my boys."

(vehicle engine humming) (dramatic newsreel music playing) NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: At Santo Tomas prison in Manila, safe at last, the internees gather for evacuation back home.

Pitifully undernourished, they can still chop wood to cook their new Army rations.

News from home, after three long years; the Red Cross distributes letters from loved ones these internees had thought they might never hear from again.

(crowd cheering) NARRATOR: As GIs escorted the Japanese guards out of the camp, some of the children ran after them shouting, "Make them bow, boys!

Make them bow!"

Four days later, General MacArthur himself visited Santo Tomas.

WEINZHEIMER: February 7 is my birthday.

I had turned 12.

And MacArthur came in for 20 minutes, greeted the prisoners and left.

(shell whizzing) (thud, explosion) And as soon as he left, the Japs started shelling the camp.

And we had a lot of internees that were killed.

A lot of soldiers, GIs that were killed.

And it was just one of those wild things that...

There was just blood everywhere, and stretchers and, um, people running.

There were two days of shelling.

We spent two days in the central kitchen until they found the nest.

NARRATOR: The battle for Manila would go on for a month.

Most of the city was destroyed.

A thousand Americans died.

So did 16,000 Japanese soldiers and nearly 100,000 Filipino civilians hit by artillery fire or slaughtered by their retreating captors.

WEINZHEIMER (dramatized): "March 8.

"Major George Woods took Mother, Dad and me through Manila "in a jeep to see the ruins.

"We had heard how badly Manila was destroyed, "but until we saw it with our own eyes, "we couldn't believe such a thing could happen.

"The whole city, nothing left!

"Taft Avenue, the Boulevard, everything in ruins.

"The odor from the dead was awful, "and whenever we stopped, the big green flies were all over us."

GLENN FRAZIER: The information that we were getting in Japan was very sketchy.

We would see some of the maps on the paper, on the newspapers on the stands as we were passing showing that the Navy was... the Navy battles were closer, and that was encouraging for us.

But it was still a question as how we were going to get out of there.

(trolley bell clangs) NARRATOR: Glenn Frazier, from Ft. Deposit, Alabama, was one of 168,000 Allied prisoners still in Japanese hands.

He had been captured in the Philippines after the fall of Bataan in the spring of 1942.

Frazier had then been so certain he would die that he had thrown his dog tags into a mass grave so that when they were found, his parents would have some idea of what had happened to him.

Now, with the Philippines retaken, American troops came upon the grave.

FRAZIER: So then they found the dog tags that I threw in the grave.

So they had absolute proof that I was in that mass grave.

So they take the dog tags and the, uh, Army gentleman goes to my mother and dad and tried to show them the dog tags and tried to settle the insurance.

So my daddy said, "Well, if I take the $10,000 and he's not dead, what happens then?"

And he says, "You'll have to pay it back."

He said, "Well, you just keep it, "because I'm sure if anybody can make it, my son can make it.

"And if he's dead, then I'll come back to you and get the $10,000."

(car engine humming) (newsreel theme music playing) LOWELL THOMAS: The historic Yalta Conference as it arrives at decisions that will shape the future of the world.

The Big Three reaffirm the ideals of the Atlantic Charter.

They call for... NARRATOR: On February 4, 1945, the day after Sascha Weinzheimer and her family were liberated, the Big Three-- U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin-- met at Yalta on the Black Sea.

In week-long talks, they pledged to hold free elections after the war in the Eastern European states captured by the Soviets, and agreed to divide Germany and Austria into three zones of occupation.

But first, Germany had finally to be defeated.

The Nazis were still trying to reinforce their army on the Eastern Front.

Stalin wanted help from American and British air power to stop them.

The Soviet leader called for air attacks on railroad stations and marshalling yards, often located in the hearts of cities.

Dresden was the first target, a beautiful old city on the Elbe, through which German reinforcements were said to be streaming east.

On February 13 and 14, 900 British and American bombers hit Dresden in two waves, dropping incendiary bombs in hopes of setting off a firestorm.

They succeeded.

At least 35,000 civilians were burned or blown apart-- or asphyxiated as they huddled in basements and bomb shelters.

The bombing went on, battering oil facilities, defense factories, roads and railways and more cities.

Pforzheim, Würzburg, Essen, Dortmund, Potsdam.

In March alone, Allied warplanes dropped 163,864 tons of bombs on Germany-- almost as many as they had dropped in the preceding three years combined.

By the middle of the next month, the air chiefs would call a halt.

They had run out of targets.

By then, 593,000 German civilians had died under Allied bombs.

Most were women.

More than 100,000 were children.

AL McINTOSH (dramatized): "February 15, 1945.

"When John Bosch was in Luverne last Friday, "he happened to stop and count the gold stars "on the Honor Roll board "and said, 'There are now 20 gold stars.'

"He didn't know it then, "but the 21st gold star would be that opposite the name "of his own son, Pfc.

Everett Bosch, who was killed on Luzon."

"The message telling of his son's death was handed Bosch when he reached his home that afternoon."

Al McIntosh, Rock County Star-Herald.

(rapid gunfire) QUENTIN AANENSON: I believe it was February 22 of 1945.

At that point I was housed in a medieval castle that was right there on the, uh, Ruhr River about two and a half miles back from the Ruhr River.

I was set up in the great hall of the castle with my maps and telephone lines coming in.

NARRATOR: Fighter pilot Quentin Aanenson of Luverne was no longer flying missions.

He'd been promoted to captain and was now coordinating air strikes from what he assumed would be the relative safety of the ground.

I was calling in my fighter planes, and there was just a tremendous amount of requests coming in for doing this, when suddenly, an 88 or a 105 artillery shell came through an opening in the wall of the castle and exploded about 30 feet from me-- somewhere like that.

I was partially shielded from the explosion because there was a column-- a stone column-- there, but the explosion took the top of the head off an enlisted man who was about 15 feet from me and, it threw... blood, tissue, brains, everything all over me, my maps.

And I remember at the time it created a lot of havoc, but I had fighter planes that were in the process of their dive, so I had to keep working there.

They carried the man who had been killed out and a couple that had been wounded.

And then while I was still working calling in the fighter planes on targets, they came over and cleaned the brain tissue out of my hair and off my leather flight jacket and... and off my maps, and we just continued on.

(plane engine roaring) (newsreel theme music playing) NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Airborne, the B-29s head for Tokyo.

The giant bombers, equipped to range over 5,000 miles, now swiftly cover the 1,500 miles from Saipan to their objective, to open the full-fledged air war against Japan.

NARRATOR: Allied planners hoped the kind of bombing that had leveled German cities would destroy the Japanese will to resist and make unnecessary the bloody invasion that otherwise seemed inevitable.

American B-29s could now reach the enemy's homeland from Saipan and Tinian, but roughly halfway between them and Japan itself lay a tiny volcanic island-- Iwo Jima.

It was an otherworldly place-- barely eight square barren miles of rock and ash, reeking of sulfur, without safe drinking water.

But it had an airstrip from which Japanese fighters rose to harass American bombers as they flew to and from their mainland targets.

American commanders wanted the island taken.

Then they could make it a haven for their crippled bombers.

For 72 straight days, American bombers pounded Iwo Jima and its defenders with some 6,000 tons of high explosives.

Three more days followed of ceaseless shelling by the Navy.

In the early morning of February 19, 1945, the Marines started toward the island.

Most were veterans of earlier landings-- Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu.

The first three waves met little resistance.

Some began to think this invasion would be different, that for once the pre-invasion bombardment really had knocked out the island's defenses.

It had not.

Some 21,000 Japanese soldiers were waiting for the Americans inside a virtually impenetrable network of tunnels and bunkers.

As the fourth wave neared the beach, the enemy opened fire.

(frenzied shouting) Sergeant Ray Pittman of Mobile was there.

PITTMAN: Going into Iwo Jima, I was a squad leader by that time.

(shell whizzes, explodes) And I always looked around and wondered "Now how many men am I going to lose?"

Course, we didn't know it was going to be bad as it was.

NARRATOR: Maurice Bell, also from Mobile, watched the fighting from the deck of the USS Indianapolis.

BELL: I set up there with my binoculars and watching the Marines on the island.

And I actually saw tanks going up... And they would come down to the beach and a bunch of Marines would get behind the tanks, and they would escort them up.

And they'd get up to certain points and jump down in the holes.

And the tank would turn, go back and escort more on up there.

And one day, I saw, I guess he was a Marine just... short distance up from the beach.

Had his flamethrower going.

It was hot that day.

And all of a sudden he stopped, and he turned and he walked back to the water, he took the flamethrower off and he undressed, put his clothes all down on top of the flamethrower and went swimming... for about 30 or 40 minutes... And he come back and he dressed, got his flamethrower and went back to fighting again.

I guess he thought he was going to be killed anyway so he might as well enjoy... cool off a little bit.

(newsreel theme music playing) NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The airfield is taken, and the advance grinds on.

Japanese are caught in the open.

(gunfire) Marines move ahead in a battle that outranks any ever fought in the Pacific.

Iwo Jima, in its first 15 days, has cost 2,050 American dead.

And the battle still rages!

NARRATOR: The fighting would go on for nearly a month before the Americans took the island.

(shouting) (rapid gunfire, shelling) The Japanese lost their entire garrison.

Once again, they had never intended to surrender.

Their mission was to kill as many Americans as possible before they were killed themselves.

6,821 Americans died-- five times the number killed on Guadalcanal or Saipan.

Among the dead were Private David Harris of Luverne, Corporal John B. Zwanch of Waterbury, Private Zera Richards of Sacramento, and Sergeant James Albert Chambliss of Mobile.

27 Medals of Honor were awarded to those who fought on Iwo Jima.

13 of them had to be given posthumously.

So many of the men in one unit were lost that it came to be called the "X-Ray Company."

Of the 16 men in Ray Pittman's squad, only he and two others were left.

PITTMAN: What I...

I went through after the war-- the dreams and everything I had-- uh... it would be just like reality to me.

But, uh... it, uh, it's really... it's really hard to explain just how you feel, because I came home and married and raised a family and lived a real happy life after the war.

But so many of them left their blood on the sand on Iwo Jima and Saipan and Tinian that they didn't have that chance.

NARRATOR: With the airstrip on Iwo Jima in their hands, the Americans were one big step closer to the Japanese homeland.

American bombers were now free to attack it at will.

(dramatic newsreel music playing) LOWELL THOMAS: The new American firebomb, the type that has been devastating Tokyo with flame.

This is how it was tried out, a blazing sweep of jellied gasoline.

That's the incendiary material, a newly developed form of ordinary gas, gelled in a way that gives it a volcanic force of blazing devastation.

NARRATOR: On the night of March 9, 1945, firebombing came to the cities of Japan.

334 American B-29s roared in low over Tokyo and dropped hundreds of thousands of 70-pound napalm bombs.

16 square miles of the city, built largely of pine and paper and bamboo, burst into flame.

Perhaps 100,000 people died.

More than a million were left without homes.

In the next ten days, the Americans went on to hit Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya again.

Some 50,000 more people were killed.

(bomb explodes) GLENN FRAZIER: When the bombing started in our area, first it was about once every two weeks.

Then it was a raid about every week, then it stepped up.

And most of the raids started at night with the B-29s, and you could hear the B-29, you could distinguish their sound, and all of a sudden you could hear these Zeros up there trying to-- and the gunfire-- trying to shoot them down.

(rapid antiaircraft fire) But we did see some of the fires in the distant places.

And it was like a ballgame to us.

I mean, we were happy about it.

And they burned out a third of the whole area, killed over 300-and-something Japanese right among us.

It burned out our own barracks that we were in.

(bombs exploding) They made rats out of us in the Philippines when we were there, and our B-29s made rats out of them in Japan.

And we knew that Americans were getting closer.

But they also told us that if any American landed on their soil, that we would all be shot-- the POWs-- that all guards had the ability to shoot you.

NARRATOR: American B-29s continued to fire-bomb Japanese cities, eventually forcing more than eight million people from their homes.

The Fifth Air Force printed up a pamphlet to reassure pilots who might have felt uneasy about killing so many civilians.

"The entire population was a proper military target," it said, "since the Japanese government had ordered all men and women to enlist in a volunteer defense corps."

"For us," the pamphlet continued, (train whistle blows) "there are no ci ("Taxi War Dance" by Count Basie playing) KATHARINE PHILLIPS: I volunteered for the Red Cross canteen, which was down at the railroad station.

We served the boys that came througon the trains.

And over our head we would carry a tray of sandwiches and another girl would carry a tray of doughnuts and another girl would carry the two jugs of coffee and a fourth girl would carry the cups.

Well, we got word one night that this troop train was due, so we got our equipment ready and out we went.

(whooping and whistling) And we started walking along by the side of the troop train and all of a sudden, the worst whoop went up and these Marines started pouring out of the troop train.

Well, I threw my sandwiches and started to run.

And the girl with the doughnuts threw her doughnuts.

But the poor girl with the coffee was caught.

Well, these Marines, we found out, had just come back from Iwo Jima.

They had been put on the ship and disembarked in New Orleans and were on their way to Parris Island.

So we were the first real American girls they had come in contact with.

And they were determined to kiss us.

So we ran as hard as we could into the canteen, slammed the door, got under the counter... locked the door, got under the counter and just sat there trembling.

Well, their officers came off, and the shore patrol, and they finally got them all together and back on the train.

And we just stayed there till the train moved out of the station.

But when we went home that night, my friend whose... who was carrying the coffee-- her name was Polly-- Polly's mother asked her, said, "Well, Polly, what did you girls do tonight?"

And Polly said, "Oh, nothing, Mama.

It was just a regular night."

She said, "How did you get those black handprints all over your coat?"

(laughing): So... we had to tell her that Polly was kissed I don't know how many times before she could get away and get into the canteen.

But her mother was not upset.

She just laughed and she said, "Well, you girls can go back next Saturday night.

You know, you're doing a good job."

Fire!

("Sheik of Araby" by Benny Goodman playing) PAUL FUSSELL: The German army had been beaten up very badly, and not just in France, but other places they'd been.

Also, Russia was beating the hell out of them in the other direction.

It wasn't child's play beating them, but it was clear they were going to be defeated.

Fire!

So we really had them in the bag.

And at that moment, I knew we were going to win this war.

As soon as the ice goes away and spring comes again, we get on the attacking frame of mind again, we're going to win.

NARRATOR: By the middle of March 1945, hundreds of thousands of Americans were crossing the Rhine and driving into the heart of Nazi Germany.

When George Patton and his Third Army began to cross near Frankfurt, the general stopped halfway across the pontoon bridge.

He'd always wanted to "piss in the Rhine," he said, and in full view of his men, he did.

Then Patton learned that his son-in-law, who had been captured in North Africa two years earlier, was being held in a German POW camp near Hammelburg.

It was some 40 miles behind the German lines, but Patton didn't care.

He dispatched a special task force-- 16 tanks, 27 half-tracks, and 300 men-- to free his daughter's husband right away.

Meanwhile, at the POW camp, the prisoners had heard that the Americans had crossed the Rhine and believed that it was only a matter of time before they would be liberated.

Tom Galloway, who had been forced to surrender early in the Battle of the Bulge, was among the prisoners.

GALLOWAY: But you couldn't get too excited about anything, you were too hungry.

Hunger was just foremost in everybody's mind when you just stay hungry all the time.

I probably lost about 50 pounds in just a few months.

HERNDON INGE: Well, you're just cold all the time.

I went three months without ever taking my clothes off.

You just stayed in your clothes 24 hours a day.

You, you took your boots off-- we had boots-- and you'd tie them to your bunk at night because they may get stolen.

NARRATOR: Second Lieutenant Herndon Inge was also from Mobile.

He, too, had been captured at the Bulge.

INGE: When I was at Hammelburg, I heard that there was a prisoner in another hut from Alabama, so I looked him up.

A skinny, dirty fellow came up to me and wanted to know if I... he said he heard I was from Mobile and it turns out it was Herndon Inge, whom we call "Wanky."

And he and I were raised probably about eight blocks from each other.

And he knew my brothers and sisters, and we've been fast friends ever since.

(artillery explosion) NARRATOR: On March 27, Patton's task force reached the prison camp.

(gunfire) INGE: Everybody was cheering and jubilant over the fact that at last we were going to be taken to good food.

(cheering) NARRATOR: Then someone started shooting.

In the confusion, Patton's son-in-law was hit by a bullet and rushed to the camp hospital, too badly wounded to be liberated.

GALLOWAY: Then they said, "We're going to move out."

They said, "If you want to go, you can go," but some went back into prison and some took off.

I took off-- two... two others and myself.

NARRATOR: More than 1,200 Americans ran out of the camp, but there were only enough vehicles to carry 250.

Thousands of Germans quickly surrounded them.

(rapid gunfire) The freed prisoners scattered.

Most, including Herndon Inge, were recaptured right away.

But Tom Galloway and his two buddies had managed to escape and were trying to make it to the American lines on foot.

GALLOWAY: We had passed a, uh... farmhouse with barns, outbuilding and a small chapel.

So I told them, and I said, "Look"... And by the way, it was Good Friday, Friday before Easter.

And I said, "This is..." in that part of Germany, Bavaria was mostly Catholic.

A matter of fact, I thought it was all Catholic.

I told them, "3:00 on Good Friday, "they're going to be in church and we're going to go in there "and get in that barn that we saw last night and get out of this weather."

Well, we broke across the field just as fast as we could go and ran in that barn.

And I think we hit the only Protestant family in that part of Bavaria.

They were all in the barn.

So, that... our luck ran out at that point.

NARRATOR: Soon, Tom Galloway, too, was back behind barbed wire.

He and Herndon Inge would have to wait to be freed once again.

(footsteps) AL McINTOSH (dramatized): "Luverne, Minnesota, March 29, 1945.

"A number of the boys in service have mentioned in their letters "they'd like to know how things are going back home.

Dear Gang..." "When we say it's spring again, "you should be able to shut your eyes wherever you are "and imagine what everything looks like.

"Everywhere you drove in Luverne Tuesday night "you could see people starting to work in their yards.

"The lawns are turning green again, "and you could see the green "in flowerbeds bordering the homes.

The farmers are getting into the fields."

NARRATOR: By the end of March 1945, American forces were steadily gathering for their next target in the Pacific war, the big, densely populated island of Okinawa.

The British had taken back Mandalay in Burma.

The Russians were within 50 miles of Berlin.

But Hitler continued to exhort his people to resist, and the militarists who governed Japan were calling upon every man, woman and child to fight to the death against the American invasion they kw was coming.

McINTOSH (dramatized): "Today started off with a big mistake "caused by an over-enthusiastic radio broadcaster "who got the idea that a victory flash "was coming up in a few minutes.

"To tell you the truth, "it didn't cause much of a flurry on Main Street.

"People have had tentative dates for victory before "and have seen their hopes dashed, "so they've made up their minds to keep their heads down "and keep working until there is no doubt of victory anymore.

"And don't get the idea that the folks back home think "it's a grand waltz.

"They know the fighting is brutal and costly "and that lots of our best boys have been lost in victory drives before."

(door squeaks shut) "They are praying and hoping that the struggle, for your sake, will be mercifully short."

Al McIntosh, Rock County Star-Herald.

(explosions) NARRATOR: Among the men who had landed on Iwo Jima with Ray Pittman of Mobile were Bill Lansford and Pete Arias, Marines from California who had been fighting in the Pacific since 1942.

Their guerrilla outfit, Carlson's Raiders, had been dissolved.

The hit-and-run jungle tactics they'd mastered at Guadalcanal and Bougainville no longer applied on Iwo Jima.

LANSFORD: When we landed, the first thing that I saw as the ramp went down was a whole bunch of wounded guys coming towards us.

People were carrying them and they were all bloody, and I said, "Uh-oh."

The noise was intense, and it was really demoralizing.

It was the worst thing I had ever experienced.

And I thought, you know, I thought, "Something's wrong with me.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to make this or not."

And there were kids, you know, digging in, trying to dig in under the artillery, and the poor kids didn't know any better.

Those of us who had been through two or three battles literally grabbed them by the neck and kicked them and saying, "Move, move, get out of here!"

because the shells were right on top of us.

I thought I was going to lose my mind.

And I thought, gee, I've been in this too damn long already.

I...

I can't take it anymore.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Pete Arias's unit had been stopped by relentless fire from a Japanese pillbox.

ARIAS: So I told this guy named Danford, I said, "Hey, Dan, let's see what we can do about this."

So we crawled up there to that place where they was holding us up and we took it out.

Then on the way back, you know, I got hit in the leg.

And Danford, he got killed right there coming back.

Pretty soon this corpsman came over there.

He wasn't from our outfit.

He says, "You been taken care of, Sarge?"

I says, "I don't know."

He said, "Let me look at you."

So he... so I had to get up and I laid down there, and he was over there.

He gave me a shot of morphine and all that stuff and, uh, I know he couldn't bandage this up because I was...

I got big wounds all over the place.

Then I heard this one coming.

(huge explosion) NARRATOR: The corpsman had thrown himself over Arias to protect him.

ARIAS: This poor guy, he took the full blast, you know, and that killed him right there.

You know, I always remember him.

I wonder who in the hell he was.

NARRATOR: Both Arias and Lansford would survive Iwo Jima and eventually get to go back home.

LANSFORD: The greatest sense that I had about the war was a sense of satisfaction, and a sense of relief that it was over and we wouldn't have to do any of that stuff again.

But I also had a sense of kinship with all the other guys who had been in the service.

Somehow we had become a separate entity from the people who were civilians.

Our feeling was that, you know, we were like our own gang.

We had all done what we were told to do, and most of us, you know, were characterized as heroes, but we weren't heroes.

We were just guys who were there and we did what we were supposed to do.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org Next time on The War... Horrors.

LEOPOLD: There is no apology that can ever atone for what I saw.

Victory... and homecoming.

AANENSON: We went out as a bunch of kids and we came back, looked maybe the same, but inside we were so different.

The final chapter of The War.

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NARRATOR: THIS IS SPECIAL, ENCORE PRESENTATION, OF THE AWARD WINNING KEN BURNS SERIES, "THE WAR".

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