Gardelegan
Chris,
Thanks for the answer. I knew it had to be that place. My father's most famous picture from this barn was the one where a man had used his hands to dig under the foundation and come up under the wall (he had managed to get one arm and his head out before he was shot from the outside. This photo appears in a 1946 post war book on WWII atrocities. Another shot shows where a group of prisoners used a dead man as a battering ram trying to breat through one of the steel doors. They managed to dent the door with the man's head before they all died. My dad never forgot the scene and was the first thing he told me about the war to impress upon me the uselessness of war and the sacrifice of our youth and the need to stop such things.
He was not anti German however and did not mind my interest and the collection, although he couldn't understand why we all would pay these prices for this junk. He was impressed with my writing books on the subject though and thought everything should be recorded and history saved for the educational value.
I really wish he had sent more home. I miss his stories about the time his unit spent in Berlin (his evac hospital was set up for the Potsdam Conference and his was one of the first US units into Berlin).
Ron Weinand
Weinand Militaria
Chris,
Thanks for the answer. I knew it had to be that place. My father's most famous picture from this barn was the one where a man had used his hands to dig under the foundation and come up under the wall (he had managed to get one arm and his head out before he was shot from the outside. This photo appears in a 1946 post war book on WWII atrocities. Another shot shows where a group of prisoners used a dead man as a battering ram trying to breat through one of the steel doors. They managed to dent the door with the man's head before they all died. My dad never forgot the scene and was the first thing he told me about the war to impress upon me the uselessness of war and the sacrifice of our youth and the need to stop such things.
He was not anti German however and did not mind my interest and the collection, although he couldn't understand why we all would pay these prices for this junk. He was impressed with my writing books on the subject though and thought everything should be recorded and history saved for the educational value.
I really wish he had sent more home. I miss his stories about the time his unit spent in Berlin (his evac hospital was set up for the Potsdam Conference and his was one of the first US units into Berlin).
Ron Weinand
Weinand Militaria
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