For the benefit of those who hadn't read it, Joel Gain recapped a recent news story in the Illinois State Journal by Dave Bakke (reprinted in last month's GunNews)  about the abuse of women at the hands of the Nazis.

Joel's Uncle Russell found it very difficult to talk about that story but did share a few different stories more readily.  

One of those took place ten or fifteen miles down the road from the women's slave camp.  There was a German field hospital with a squad of Germans guarding it.  But by the time they got there, no Germans were to be found.  Right along side the two story brick building, still full of patients, was a stand of trees. The GI's fired about ten seconds worth of .50's into them and stopped.  Germans poured out of there like water and lined up.

Joel asked Russell, "Was anybody wounded?"  Russell said, "One German but that was from wood shrapnel."  A .50 caliber will mow a tree down and bark and limbs just go flying.

Russell told them another story about a Luger he brought home.  It was a submarine issue.  While they were chasing the Germans they came to these little farm settings like three or four houses together with buildings around them.  At one the stove was still warm and there was coffee on the table and there laid this Luger.  Russell said, "That looks to good to be true."

 So he got down and looked underneath the table and there was a bomb wired to it.  Joel asked Russell how he got the gun.  "Being a communications guy, he had all kinds of copper wire.  He took a stent and wrapped the wire around it and shoved it under the guard of that gun and dropped that wire through the table.  Then he got underneath and wrapped that copper wire around that trigger and took his wire cutters and cut that wire."  Joel asked, "What happened to that bomb?"  Russell said, "I don't know."

Russell told another story, Joel doesn't know what city they were in.  Those guys just worked around the clock, without sleep, and they were almost like zombies.  Russell was so tired that he just leaned back against a brick wall.  As he sat there a potato masher came right over the wall.  He said the string hadn't been pulled on it so he took it and threw it back over the wall.  Here it came again.

This time he took out one of his own, pulled the pin and counted to three.  Then he pulled the string on the potato masher and threw both of them back over the wall.

Joel asked what happened then, Russell said, "I don't know, I never went to check, but they never came back!"