My new friend Karl contacted me. Here are his letters to me and this is the info I compiled for him this morning.

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dear missis marion. first let me tell you who i am. i am a hobby

historian living in germany near heidelberg, my friends and i

participate in collecting us army artifacts and also reeanactments.

second interest is the two weeks before and after the occupation of the

rhein-neckar area in april 1945. i read that the 540 th engineer combat

group did some operations here. i like to ask you if you would give me a

hand on finding out what units build the bridges in this area. i would

be very thankful. yours truly karl heinz kleine

hello marion. i thank you very much for your agreement to give me a hand

on my researches. i work with a partner who is stationed in heidelberg,

with the airforce, he may also write to you sometimes. we are trying to

cover the occupation of the rhein-neckar-area precisly with all exact

informations such as unit descriptions and correct places. the picture

you attached i think i know where it was taken i will go there and take

a comparisation shot and send it to you. i am also in contact with the

63rd inf.div veterans and have a cd of pictures from them. i already

located some pictures there that i will look for and make also

comparisations.thank you again i remain greetings from heidelberg, yous

karl heinz

hello marion. good to hear you are very much involved in engineer history. thanks a lot also for your recent mail.the picture in

heidelberg will have to wait some since i don`t get to go to heidelberg

too often however its planned in the near future.i will also send you a

panorame postcard from the most romantic city in germany. the bridges

in question to make it easyer for you are from north to south on the

rhein : rheindürckheim/hamm, worms down stream from the nibelungenbridge

destroyed, mannheim/sndhofen, ludwigshafen to mannheim, on the neckar in

mannheim city , heidelberg city also later in heidelberg downstream from

the friedrichsbridge and maybe a bridge up river at hassmersheim. these

are all that i could think of, if there are anymore on these rivers let

me know. for your efforts i allready thank you very much. since i`m also

involved in reenactments i will soon send you a picture of our group

with me on it just so you know with what an ol`goat your dealing with.

once again thank you very much til next time. karl

I written to him a few times now and sent this to him this morning.

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Karl:

Here is the initial document. I will send photos later today. Hope this is a tremendous help to you. Actually it helps me out tremendously because it forces me to keep up my research and writing. :-) I plan to add this to my site later today too. YEAH!

Marion

The document is entitled Bridges Built in Germany by the 540th Combat Engineers. It also includes many/most of the cities they traipsed through.

Photos later...

Bridges_Built_in_Germany_540th_Combat_Engs.pdf

Here is a PDF file that I sent to Karl just now. It contain photos and captions from the 540th's book, Overseas With the 540th.

Note: It is a LARGE file.

Bridges_Built_in_Germany_540th_C.E..pdf