"Now we had the skipper on the bridge, the helmsman below him, and the engine room below him, and the radar man. And the fifth man fired the rockets, and that dubious distinction was mine. I got to do the firing. Well, somehow in some sort of…

"I had left most of my clothing and belongings at school, so I asked for a four-day pass to get my things. The Company commander said he needed me, so he sent a jeep to collect my things, which only took one day. The teachers that were still there…

Editor's Note: After Eugene's grandmother Johanna Muller's apartment in Hannover was lost to an Allied Air Raid in 1944, she had to spend the remainder of the war in a government-run shelter.  Once the war was over, she remained in Germany and…

Editor's Note: When he was 16 years old, Eugene and other members of his Hitler Youth group were taken to a training camp where they were run through military drills and ultimately asked to commit to joining the SS (Schutzstaffel) a major…

“During the war Carl was classified as a conscientious objector and was assigned to a special troop division. These were troops used to hold a line while other troops were pulled back. He fought outside of Stalingrad and his position was overrun; he…

“After Christmas 1944 I was returning to school from my visit to my grandmother when the train to Stadtoldendorf stopped… Several days later we were skiing in that general direction and we saw what looked like vapor trails going straight up, but no…

Editor's Note: When the war intensified, the Nazi regime sent school kids into the countryside, and Eugene began to live away from his family. Eugene lived with a group of boys near the Polish border. “We were housed in a youth hostel in the village…

“We had a lot of troubles with the Hitler Youth leaders since we were considered Americans. I did get into a lot of fights, until my father paid them a visit… The German law required all children to enter the organized German Youth, or Deutsche…

"We just bust this outfit up, and I ended up with a unit -- a different unit called a 1333rd Engineer Regimen going to the Panama Canal on the way to the Pacific. About half the men in my unit ended up coming back to the states. Well, I got on a…

"We were taken back up or given orders to go to the Dusseldorf area in an apparent occupational capacity. But after two weeks there our battalion commander said we were moving out. And we find ourself in a convoy to Merced. And the war was…