Photos Photos of the US Army in the ETO

[guest0001]

U.S. Soldiers cross a small pontoon bridge over the Rur (Roer) River near Jülich Germany in February 1945
Shots ring out and a soldier goes down crossing the bridge, when medics are trying to cross the same pontoon bridge with the body still on it, the pontoon bridge breaks apart and they have to be rescued
The last picture is an aerial picture of the bridge location
LIFE Magazine Archives - George Silk & William Vandivert Photographers

 

[guest0001]

 

[guest0001]

 

[guest0001]

 

[guest0001]

 

[guest0001]

Major-General Earnest N. Harmon, Commander of the US Army XXII Corps, consults a map on the hood of his Jeep during the period of the Rhine crossings, March 1945.
His M1 helmet shell is beautifully marked with the two-stars of this rank and the XXII Corps insignia.
(LIFE / Vandivert)

 

[guest0001]

This smiling US tanker of the 761st Tank Battalion... "The Black Panthers"... has just finished pulling-through the gun tube of his M4A3 (75mm) during a maintenance pause on the advance into Germany, March 1945.
(LIFE / Vandivert)

 

[guest0001]

A column of US tanks laden with GIs rolls through a German town following the Rhine crossings, March 1945.
The closest tank is an M4.
Its tracks have been fitted with "duckbills" to improve flotation over soft ground, though at the moment it's driving along a cobbled street.
Interestingly, the dark "shadow" just visible and projecting from the forward slope of the glacis suggests that this tank has been fitted with some improvised applique armour.... (see arrow)
This was not uncommon in the closing months of the war as advancing Allied armour began to encounter increasing numbers of hand-held Panzerfausts etc.
The armour plate was usually cut from KO'd tanks and welded in place at field workshops.
Various units develped their own distinctive "styles".

 

[guest0001]

US Personnel in a jeep are greeted by locals in Nové Strašecí Czechoslovakia - May 1945
Muzeum T. G. M. Rakovník Archives

 

[guest0001]

M4A3(105) in Ohrdruf Germany - April 1945
LIFE Magazine Archives - David Scherman Photographer

 

[guest0001]

German troops surrendering to US Army soldiers near Aachen. October 1944.

 

[guest0001]

5th Army Provisional Mounted Reconnaissance Troop walk calmly amid the devastation in Italy during World War II.

 

[guest0001]

348th Engineer Combat Battalion in the Ardennes.

 

[guest0001]

On November 20, 1944, soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Army with a portrait of Hitler cut out of cardboard, seized from a public building in Metz, France, November 20, 1944

 

[guest0001]

American Lieutenant Edwin E. Dowell with a Colt 1911 pistol and a French partisan with Sten English-made submachine gun, during a street battle in Marseilles. 1944.
Source: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/53132

 

[guest0001]

An anti-tank platoon from the 41st Armored Infantry, 2nd Armored Division set up a 57mm gun in preperation for a german counter attack. Pont Brocard, France. July 29, 1944.

 

[guest0001]

Two year old Freida Neil celebrates her second birthday with officers and men of a US Army headquarters company which just offically adopted her. England. July 1943.

 

[guest0001]

LIFE correspondent Percy Knauth, left, sifted through debris in the shallow trench in the garden of the Reich Chancellery where, Knauth was told, the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned after their suicides. Berlin, 1945.
William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Getty Images

 

[guest0001]

May 1945, Bavaria.
Massive gold, part of Hermann Goering art treasures found by 7th Army in a mine near Schönau am Königssee.

 

[guest0001]

An exhausted nurse at the 44th evacuation hospital, Normandy, France, 1944.
This photograph was taken a month after D-day at Bricqueville, Normandy. Forty nurses were attached to this mobile hospital, eight miles south of Omaha Beach. Between 5 July and 4 August they treated some 4,500 patients, of which only 50 died.
Just one of many of Lee Miller's stunning images of women in wartime.
Source Theguardian.com