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With complicated thoughts lef t to be finally sorted out, Ren’s war resumed.The 102nd follow ed a rapidly moving First Army in the final days of fighting in Germany. On April 7 the hospital set up in tents some two hundred miles farther east atWarburg (“an appropriate name”). The diminishing war permitted offi cers the option of billeting in town. However, because of the damage to Warburg, most of them, including Ren, found the pyramidal tents (after a two-day search for five hundred lost tent pegs) mor e accommodating. For the two weeks in Warburg they averaged 70 in the war ds per day from actual ongoing battle and military vehicular accidents and another 250 a day f rom Allied POWs recently liberated f rom German camps—soldiers f rom “Scotland, US, Russia,Belgium,New Zealand,Italy,Australia,Poland,France . . .emaciated soldiers,” Ren emphasized, “in many cases nothing to eat at all for six days” before reaching the 102nd.Still, compared to Huy and even the Kurhaus, the schedule of the 102nd r elaxed. And the now pr edictable consequence of downtime reappeared. When Ren’s Jeep first rolled into Warburg, its covered trailer brought along gallons of medical alcohol and cognac. Only at Roumont did bug juice fl ow the way it did at Warburg as doctors with hangovers constantly struggled with nausea and diarrhea. As a result,“surgery is just moving too slow,”Ren observed,“nothing like Brest [Ploudaniel,] when we were at our best.” On April 21 the 102nd mov ed another 1 50miles east to Gera.There,as German forces in the Ruhr surrendered and the Soviets reached Berlin, the liberated POWs—especially Yugoslavs, Czechs, and Rumanians— continued to flow steadily into the hospital. In other ways, too, the Warburg pace continued.After a sleety and rainy first day,the oil heaters were used less and less in the tents,the days were “clear,”“fine,”and “beautiful,” and outdoor bug-juice sessions pondered when it would be all over. Ren had time to explore the town, where stockpiles of German miliCHAPTER 12 Final Days in Europe Apr il –Octo ber 1945 102 ch a pt er 12 tary goods turned up in warehouses. Along with many officers from the 102ndhe visited several of these sites.Although he expropriated a cavalry saddle envisioned as a gif t for daughter Margaret, a subsequent memorandum from First Army HQ reminded him that such behavior was illegal , so he returned it. His self-avowed “moral laxity” in the chaos of an ending war was “appropriately corrected.” Other adventures gone bad were more difficult to correct. One drunk private accidentally shot another drunk private. Still another drunk private fell off a truck and was run over and killed in the traffic. In addition, three of “our truck drivers . . . drunk . . . run over 3 liberated Hungarians, killing one and breaking arms and head of another [then] pull .45 [pistol ] on [our] warrant officer.” Ren did the funerals. Out-of-town travels included two trips 220 miles northeast to the Buchenwald concentration camp, the first trip on April 25,just two weeks after the Allies liberated the horrific facility. After seeing “a few prisoners” still in the camp under treatment from US field hospitals, he returned to Gera with two fundamental thoughts: “So many Jews killed . . . SS so very brutal.” Although back to being adventuresome, he still was in this r eflective mood when, on May 8,the radio brought news of the German surrender. He was naturally “up” about the war winding down. “V DAY IN EUROPE !” he began his diary entry. “I hear speech by Churchill at 3:00 pm [on radio],” and “I hold Victory Day service outdoors . . . singing [as per army directive] ‘Faith of Our Fathers,’‘Star-Spangled Banner,’‘God Bless America,’and ‘My Country,’Tis of Thee.’Good service.”But the celebration did little to dim the war’s still unfolding reality: “4 deaths in hospital last few days, 2 [of them] D OAs, a Russian . . . [and ] Lt. Roy Crooks of Concord, North Carolina, fractured skull, 3/4 ton truck wreck, died this am.” On further reflection about the day —after the Victory Day service—“everyone was quiet and cared little for noise.” Gradually heading toward their exit from Europe, the 102nd r eversed course on May 13,when it moved two hundred miles toward the Rhine River. Again they set up in tents —this time in an alfalfa fi eld...

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