Wednesday, 18 April [1945] Oberlosa, Germany1 Oberlosa is located just outside of Plauen, to the south.
Up at 0600. A beautiful morning. We had finished breakfast at 0730 and immediately began loading our trucks. We had planned to move at 1000 but there was a change in plans and after loafing around until dinner, we finally began our move at 1300. We headed towards Plauen and just before entering that city, passed an airport where many German planes had been destroyed on the ground. Our troops also discovered many hundreds of new plane motors which were ready for shipment. Quite a few German soldiers were still sprawled around in the same positions in which they had fallen. This was just a soft preview of what we encountered a few miles further on as we came into PLAUEN. Picture a city of nearly 200,000 completely destroyed, not a single house left whole. Where is its inhabitants? What are they doing? What are they thinking? Certainly these few hundred miserable people, poking about in the ruins are not all that is left of such a large population. The Russians and other nationalities which were formerly slave laborers show such hatred of even these wretched remnants that we f[ind] it necessary to protect them. It is a horrible sight, these humans reduced to the state of beasts but one for which we did not cast the mold but merely poured the contents. We finally left these horrors behind us and a few miles and about a thousand PW’s further on, arrived at Oberlosa where we bivouacked for the night. I hit the sack at 2200.
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Wednesday, 18 April, 1945
