S.S. Troopers

Those who ventured to do us harm were the S. S. Troops along the way. At one place several stepped out of buildings along the streets of a small town and took from the soldiers the watches that they had managed to get by the first guards. Others took the galoshes from the men who carried them over the shoulders because it was difficult to march in them. Some took other things they desired. I managed to get by them without loss, but
when we stopped, Major Irving Tietzl, St. Louis, Missouri, made a complaint; and the Germans, to prove they had the power, made all of us take our galoshes off and leave them for the Germans. Most of the men tried to look at the bright side of it all and since we had seen a lot of their equipment, we thought we would soon be back in American hands and could get more galoshes.

Their tanks which we passed were larger than anything we had seen. We figured they were the Royal Tiger tanks. I marched beside one at one time as it was stopped on the road that we had taken and I had an opportunity to look it over. It was a monster and we knew it packed death with every shell. The other equipment was, from all appearances, inefficient. They served their soldiers soup from hand pushed carts. Their supplies were brought up by horse-drawn wagons. We saw but few trucks and most of these were old. How they continued to give such stubborn resistance was hard to understand outside of the fact that the German was a determined soldier. His persistence regardless of odds, plus the fact that the S. S. Troops were prodding him on, caused us much grief.