H-0945: A Common Soldier's Story of WWII

Karl F. Hollenbach was inducted into the Army in 1943 as part of the Army Special Training Program. During his basic training, the A.S.T.P. ended, and he was reassigned to the 106th Infantry Division. He was reassigned again to the 1471st Engineer Maintenance Company, narrowly missing deployment with the 106th to the European front where they would later receive devastating losses. On 17 January of 1945 Karl survived a horrendous train wreck in Saint Valery En Caux, France where 120 U.S. soldiers died and 200 more were injured. Karl spent the next year serving in parts of France, and Germany as an Armored Artificer with the 1471st. After his honorable discharge in 1946, he spent another seven years in the reserves with a unit in the Engineer Aviation Battalion and was formally discharged with the rank of tech-sergeant in 1953. Altogether, he spent ten years in the U.S. Army during one of the worst conflicts in American history. Hollenbach describes the European landscape nearing the end of WWII from the eyes of a young enlisted man. This "every man's war" memoir is insightful, vivid, and stunning with over forty-five photographs taken by Hollenbach nearly seventy years ago.