Behind Hitler's Lines (29 page)

At a departure airfield for the Market-Garden jump, troopers get a last-minute briefing on what to expect. Censors scratched out Screaming Eagles shoulder patches. (U.S. Army)

Currahees board a C-47 to jump into the Netherlands for Market-Garden. (U.S. Army)

Charlie Eckman
(right),
who was wounded seventeen times, spars with Denver Madden, who was killed during Market-Garden. (Charlie Eckman)

American wounded in a makeshift aid station, Bastogne, Belgium. (U.S. Army)

The cold, the ruins, the dead of Bastogne. (U.S. Army)

Currahees, upon liberating the Landsberg concentration camp, approach some of the victims. (U.S. Army)

Russian soldiers receiving mail from home, an event that Joe never witnessed and that was probably staged for this photo. The soldier on the right holds a submachine gun like the one issued to Joe. (Novosti)

Waffen SS troops, exhausted from fighting the Red Army. (Imperial War Museum)

Russian troops during house-to-house fighting in Kustrin on the Oder River. The soldier on the left has a flamethrower. (Novosti)

Saint Joseph's convent in Warsaw, where Joe took refuge in 1945. He took this photo in 1989, and found the statue of Saint Joseph still pockmarked from World War II. (Joe Beyrle)

The basement of the convent, where the sisters treated his many wounds. (Joe Beyrle)

Joe with two Polish sisters in 1989. (Joe Beyrle)

Liberated krieges, April 1945. (U.S. Army)