Cooperative Living May 2018 - 16

CoverStory | by Priscilla Knight, Contributing Writer
WWII VET PERSUADED A GERMAN
GENERAL TO SURRENDER IN MAY 1945
A VIRGINIA CO-OP MEMBER STORMED OMAHA BEACH
ON D-DAY AND SURVIVED THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE
BEFORE HE CONVINCED A GERMAN GENERAL TO
SURRENDER AS THE RUSSIAN ARMY APPROACHED.
THIS IS TOM STAFFORD'S AMAZING WWII STORY.
Background:
Germany in a Tightening Vice
German Chancellor and Nazi Party
Führer Adolph Hitler ignited World War II
when his Wehrmacht army started
invading European countries in 1939. The
British, American, French and other Allied
Expeditionary Forces (AEF) started to
bring Hitler to his knees when U.S. Army
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully
commanded the D-Day invasion of
Normandy on June 6, 1944. From there,
Allied soldiers pushed through France,
Belgium, Luxemburg and finally into
Germany in March 1945.
From the east, Joseph Stalin's Red Army
barreled into Germany in April. They
wanted retribution after Wehrmacht
soldiers slaughtered and raped millions
of Russians in 1941. As they marched,
Soviet signs declared: " Soldier: You are
now on German soil. The hour of
revenge has struck! " Revenge they got
in Berlin. As word spread, terrified
Germans fled into neighboring countries,
especially Czechoslovakia.
With the AEF and Red Army turning a
tightening vice, Hitler
committed suicide on April
30, 1945. Under his 12year
Third Reich reign of
terror, an estimated 50- to
80-million people died.
But even with Hitler gone,
many of the Wehrmacht,
Schutzstaffel (SS), Hitler
Youth and " werewolves "
continued fighting,
especially since the
SS shot soldiers trying
to surrender.
Tom Stafford, almost
95, reflects on his
military service in the
3rd Battalion, 347th
Infantry Regiment,
87th Infantry
Division during
World War II.
Fighting From D-Day to V-E Day
Tom Stafford, a Northern Virginia
Electric Cooperative member today, fought
from D-Day to V-E (Victory in Europe)
Day after being drafted in 1943 out of
Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia
Tech). From Normandy's Omaha Beach,
the soldier from Colonial Heights went
through the brutal Battle of the Bulge in
the Ardennes region that bitterly cold
winter as a platoon sergeant. After crossing
the Rhine River in March, 1945, the AEF
fanned out through Germany against
Wehrmacht resistance.
In one encounter, Stafford directed the
two tanks accompanying his infantry rifle
platoon to fire on Wehrmacht soldiers
trying to blow up a medieval bridge in
Plauen to stall the Allies. " I raced across
the bridge and cut the demolition ignition
wires while my men captured or drove off
German defenders, " Stafford explains.
Discovering Concentration Camps
As AEF soldiers took more German
towns, they began seeing startling sights.
On April 11, an American captain saw
along a road in Nordhausen " a strange
apparition ... a frail-looking creature with
striped pants and naked from the waist up.
It appeared to be a human skeleton with
little signs of flesh, if any. ... There was no
face, merely a gaunt human skull staring
out. The teeth were exposed in a broad
grin. ... " According to this account in
Stephen E. Ambrose's book, Citizen Soldiers:
The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches
to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany;
the captain and his troops encountered
more gaunt figures along the road until
they discovered hundreds of bodies in a
Nazi concentration camp.
Stafford volunteered to visit another
camp discovered that day called
Buchenwald. He wrote, " Etched forever in
my memory were piles of dead bodies, at
least 10 to 15 feet high, and German
civilians ordered by Americans to bear
witness to the Nazis' atrocities. "
Generals Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and
George S. Patton saw their first camp on
14 | Cooperative Living | May 2018
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