Translated this from French to English for JPaul...
Hello Marion,
Thank you for your reply and sorry not to have responded immediately. I appreciate you taking the time to answer me in French. My knowledge of the English language is quite small, allow me to write to you in French, if you so desired. .
I do research on my father and my mother who was in the city of Waldbrol during WW2 and searching the internet, I found your forum and topic concerned, I think, research on an American soldier lying in hospitals around the city in April 1945.
Subject: http://www.6thcorpscombatengineers.com/engforum/index.php?showtopic=6600&st=0
The name of the city Waldbrol is often mentioned, as well as period. So, I wanted to ask a question, but I do not understand anything and I have struggled to explain.
As regards my parents, my father was a prisoner of war, soldier of the French army in a camp Stalag VI G dependent and worked in a leather factory that supplied the German army. My mother was deported by the Germans to work in a factory making uniforms for soldiers in this country. She came from Poland and was housed in barracks.
My father and mother experienced during this period and was there when the American army entered Waldbrol 8 or 9 April 1945. ;
Alas, I have no details about the U.S. military that day and the following. I liked when, how, what unit, what corps etc ... If veterans remember. My father told me (he died in 1980, and my mother in 1976), the day when the U.S. Army arrived in the village, prisoners of war, my mother and other refugees were deported in the woods away from Waldbrol. Not knowing how it would happen, if it would fire etc. .... As the U.S. remained at the entrance of the village, my father said he took me a stick with a white flag and walked alone to the soldiers, telling them they were more in the woods and they were not German ....
But I have no other details.
As I told my father and mother are known in the village, where the French prisoners and deportees from Poland and Russia were working for the Germans. They struggled to understand and speak a little German in them (they had learned more or less forced and obliged).
The U.S. military is on site, and Germany almost conquered the end of the war was near, and each would return to his country ...
My parents then decided to get married in Germany in order to get together in France then. For this they were to be married in the Catholic Church Waldbrol. In Germany only a religious marriage is recognized as a true marriage;
Therefore, requests etc ... had to be made when the U.S. army was still in the village and I think I read somewhere that Waldbrol became the headquarters of the region for the U.S. Army.
Thus Avril1945 28, my parents were married in Germany in order to live and be together in France and start a new life after five years of captivity and deprivation.
I think the U.S. Army had already left Waldbrol, that day, otherwise it could be that U.S. soldiers attend this ceremony.
Well, I tried to tell you this part of the story of my parents who rubbed for a few days these men from America to deliver and end this war some time later.
If I had more, it would be great and allow myself to complete this "biography" of my parents, and share their story to their great-grandchildren ...
Thank you and sorry for being so verbose!
Waiting for your reply and remain at your disposal,
Serdeczne pozdrowiania
.
JPaul
PS: Now I do not know if I can join the forum or if you can already find out, because it will be not easy for me to explain it all ...
Proud Daughter of Walter (Monday) Poniedzialek
540th Engineer Combat Regiment, 2833rd Bn, H&S Co, 4th Platoon
There's "No Bridge Too Far"
