- 1 week ago
American engineers did not crack the Siegfried Line by smashing concrete alone — they figured out that a fortification is really about sightlines, fire, and the ground beneath it. From a farm track on the German border to the pillboxes at Steinfeld and the crossings near the Rhine, this WW2 military history story follows the shift from demolition charges to tank dozers, bulldozers, and earthworks that buried firing slits and doors instead of trying to explode them.
The result is a gripping account of armored warfare, combat engineering, and the brutal arithmetic of breaching a defensive line that ran hundreds of kilometers and had already cost engineers and infantry dearly. It covers the failed attempts, the minefields, the interlocking pillboxes, and the moment American crews began using blades and dirt to make the wall irrelevant. If you like World War 2 documentaries, battlefield engineering stories, and narrated history about the Western Front, this is the kind of military history deep dive that stays with you.
Created for listeners searching for WW2 stories, Siegfried Line history, combat engineer stories, tank dozer warfare, and Western Front documentary narration. Also a strong fit for military history fans, history podcast listeners, and anyone looking for calm but intense historical storytelling, background listening, or long-form war history analysis.
The result is a gripping account of armored warfare, combat engineering, and the brutal arithmetic of breaching a defensive line that ran hundreds of kilometers and had already cost engineers and infantry dearly. It covers the failed attempts, the minefields, the interlocking pillboxes, and the moment American crews began using blades and dirt to make the wall irrelevant. If you like World War 2 documentaries, battlefield engineering stories, and narrated history about the Western Front, this is the kind of military history deep dive that stays with you.
Created for listeners searching for WW2 stories, Siegfried Line history, combat engineer stories, tank dozer warfare, and Western Front documentary narration. Also a strong fit for military history fans, history podcast listeners, and anyone looking for calm but intense historical storytelling, background listening, or long-form war history analysis.
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LearningTranscript
00:00September 13th, 1944.
00:03A farm track a little over half a mile south of the village of Obervorstbach,
00:08just inside the German border, a few miles from Aachen.
00:12An American tank platoon leader named John Hoffman is sitting in an open turret hatch,
00:17looking at the thing that has stopped an armored division.
00:21Ahead of him, the ground rises a little, and then the field turns into teeth.
00:26Rows of concrete pyramids, four rows deep, each one about waist-high,
00:31running away left and right until they vanish into the tree line.
00:35Behind them, every hundred yards or so, wherever the ground is good, sit the pillboxes.
00:41The infantry has already gone through.
00:44Men can walk between concrete teeth.
00:47Tanks cannot.
00:49Colonel Leander Doan has a battalion of tanks from the 32nd Armored Regiment,
00:53a battalion of armored infantry, a platoon of tank destroyers, and a company of armored engineers.
01:00The engineers have the answer sitting in a half-track.
01:03Explosive.
01:04Enough to blow a gap wide enough for a Sherman.
01:08But every time they start forward, German mortar fire comes down on the teeth,
01:12and the engineers go flat, and nothing happens.
01:16So the tanks sit, and the infantry that walked through is now on the far side by itself,
01:21in front of pillboxes, with no armor.
01:25It is mid-afternoon.
01:26The attack has failed.
01:28And notice how quietly it failed.
01:31Nobody is being overrun.
01:32Nobody is running.
01:34The Americans are simply stopped by concrete poured six years earlier,
01:38and the daylight is going.
01:40Then somebody walks a few hundred yards along a secondary road and finds something.
01:45The official army history never recorded his name.
01:49A farm crossing.
01:51At one point on that road,
01:53the local farmers had gotten tired of driving their carts around a belt of concrete.
01:57So at some point, nobody wrote down
02:00they had shoveled stone and earth over a stretch of the teeth,
02:03filled it in,
02:04made a hump,
02:06a ramp,
02:07the tanks went over there.
02:08Not through the Siegfried line.
02:10Over it.
02:11On a pile of dirt that German farmers had made with shovels so they could move hay.
02:16Hold that picture.
02:18Because the rest of this story turns on it.
02:21Four years of national effort,
02:23and the first American armor across it went over a heap of farm soil.
02:28Before we go on,
02:29if you want more on what American engineers and GIs actually did in this war,
02:33a like and a subscribe helped this video reach the people who'd want to see it.
02:38Because here is what that wall was.
02:40Six hundred and thirty kilometers of it,
02:43from the Dutch border to the Swiss.
02:45More than 18,000 bunkers and tank traps.
02:49By the end of September 1938,
02:51more than 500,000 men were working on it at once.
02:56That winter it swallowed a third of everything Germany's cement industry produced.
03:01A third.
03:02Not of the army's share.
03:03Of the whole country's.
03:06And the teeth themselves were not stupid.
03:08Each one sits on a single slab of reinforced concrete,
03:11sunk a meter or two into the ground.
03:13So the whole belt is one piece.
03:16You cannot tip a tooth.
03:18You cannot dig under it.
03:20A tank that tries to climb gets its belly exposed to whatever is watching from behind.
03:26These were built by people who thought carefully about tanks.
03:30What they were not built against was earth.
03:34Except that on the very same day,
03:36ten miles to the southeast,
03:38that idea failed completely.
03:41Another column from the same division,
03:44Task Force Lovelady under Lieutenant Colonel William Lovelady,
03:47had reached a place called Rutgen the day before.
03:51Rutgen was the first German town in the war to fall to an invading army.
03:55The people hung white sheets from the windows
03:58and stood in their doorways watching the Americans come through.
04:02The Germans had blown an enormous crater in the highway where it passed the teeth.
04:08Lovelady's men did the obvious thing.
04:10They filled it, threw dirt into the hole.
04:13And the dirt turned to muck.
04:15The official history gives it one line.
04:18The way official histories bury things.
04:20The task force eventually had to blast a path through the dragon's teeth
04:24after the dirt thrown into the big crater turned to muck.
04:28Not until late in the morning did the armor pass.
04:31Half a day of an armored division's life,
04:34ten miles from where a farmer's shovel work had done the job for free.
04:39So which is it?
04:40On one road, Earth beats four years of concrete in an afternoon.
04:45On another road, ten miles away, on the same day, in the same division,
04:50Earth does nothing at all, and men go back to explosive.
04:54That gap, between the dirt that worked and the dirt that didn't,
04:59is the question this whole story turns on.
05:02The answer is not, push soil over the teeth.
05:05Anyone can push soil.
05:08The answer took another six months to work out.
05:10It cost engineers whose names are in the record.
05:12And when the Americans finally got it right,
05:15they stopped aiming at the teeth altogether.
05:18By the spring of 1945, an American crew in front of a German fort
05:22would do something no manual had told them to do.
05:25And the men inside, sitting in undamaged, reinforced concrete,
05:29would come out with their hands up.
05:32Nothing had been broken.
05:33Nothing had even been damaged.
05:35Go back to that farm ramp for a moment.
05:37Because what happened next tells you why this took six months to solve.
05:42The Americans had a flail tank with them.
05:45A scorpion.
05:46Chains on a rotating drum.
05:48Built to beat mines out of the ground ahead of a column.
05:51It went up the farmer's fill first.
05:53And the fill was fresh, loose, unpacked Earth.
05:57And the scorpion sank into it and stopped.
06:01Think about what that means.
06:03There is exactly one hole in the Siegfried Line in this sector.
06:07And it is now corked by a stuck vehicle.
06:10In the open.
06:12In daylight.
06:13With German mortar crews already ranged on the ground it is sitting on.
06:18Sergeant Sferi Dahl and the crew got out.
06:21A tank platoon leader, Lieutenant John Hoffman,
06:24brought two tanks up, hitched them on,
06:26and dragged the scorpion clear.
06:28Three vehicles bunched on a dirt mound in front of a fortified line,
06:32doing recovery work.
06:34Then the tanks went through.
06:36And the Germans went to work.
06:39The armor came off that ramp into open ground in front of pillboxes,
06:43with the infantry too far ahead to screen it.
06:46German soldiers with panzerfausts knocked out four of Doan's tanks.
06:51Assault guns took more.
06:53By the end of the day,
06:54the colonel who had just made the first armored penetration of the Siegfried Line
06:58had ten tanks left.
07:01So here is the first thing to correct.
07:03And it is the thing most people get wrong about this wall.
07:07The dragon's teeth were never the weapon.
07:09They were the anvil.
07:11Their job was to hold you still,
07:13in a place chosen years in advance,
07:16while something else killed you.
07:18Get across them badly,
07:20in the wrong place,
07:21at the wrong speed,
07:22and you have not beaten the line.
07:24You have arrived inside it.
07:27Three weeks later,
07:29north of Aachen,
07:30the U.S. 30th Infantry Division
07:31showed exactly what that meant.
07:34October 2nd, 1944,
07:3611 in the morning.
07:38The 1st Battalion of the 117th Infantry
07:41goes over a stream called the Wurm,
07:4330 feet across,
07:45steep, muddy banks.
07:47Nothing an armored vehicle can cross,
07:49until engineers build it a bridge.
07:51Which means the men going in
07:53have no tanks.
07:55One hour later,
07:57by noon,
07:58Charlie Company has 87 casualties.
08:01The battalion commander was Robert Franklin,
08:04and afterward he said something
08:05that ought to be read slowly.
08:08All the training we had in the States,
08:10and in England,
08:11was now useless.
08:14Not most of it.
08:15Not some of it.
08:17The division's intelligence officer
08:19wrote down why.
08:21The pillboxes were sighted in clusters,
08:23all inter-supporting
08:25and sighted to cover each other by fire.
08:27You could not attack one.
08:30Every time you moved on a pillbox,
08:32you were moving into the field of fire
08:34of two or three others
08:35that you often could not see.
08:38By the end of that day,
08:39the 117th had reduced 11 pillboxes
08:42and taken 227 casualties.
08:45The two regiments beside them
08:47took roughly twice that.
08:4911.
08:50In a line that had more than 18,000 structures.
08:55And now I have to tell you the part
08:57that makes those numbers hurt.
08:59The wall those men were dying against
09:01in the autumn of 1944
09:03was not the wall the newsreels had sold in 1939.
09:09After France fell in 1940,
09:12the Germans stripped it.
09:13Guns came out of the bunkers
09:15and went west to the Atlantic coast.
09:18Doors and fittings were pulled and shipped.
09:21Then four years of rain got into the rest.
09:24The official U.S. Army history
09:26has a phrase for what was left.
09:29It calls it something of a Potemkin village.
09:32There is a detail I keep coming back to.
09:35The small bunkers had embrasures cut
09:38for the 1934 model German machine gun.
09:41By 1944, the standard gun was the 42,
09:45and the newer anti-tank guns had grown as well.
09:49They did not fit.
09:51Men were being sent to defend concrete
09:52that would not physically accept
09:54the weapons they had been issued.
09:56And who was sent?
09:58Hitler ordered the line rebuilt
10:00with 20,000 forced laborers
10:02and boys of the Reich Labor Service,
10:04most of them 14, 15, 16 years old,
10:09filling in with shovels
10:10what a nation had built
10:11with a third of its cement.
10:14Sit with that arithmetic for a second.
10:16A stripped, flooded, obsolete wall
10:20patched by teenagers
10:22holding weapons it was not cut for.
10:25And it still cost one American regiment
10:29227 men in a single day
10:31for 11 pillboxes.
10:34That is what the American army
10:36was actually facing.
10:37Not the myth.
10:39The ruin of the myth.
10:41And the ruin was still expensive enough
10:43to stop divisions.
10:45So the army did what its own doctrine
10:48said to do.
10:48It brought up explosive.
10:51That was the answer on paper,
10:52and it worked.
10:54And it kept working
10:55all the way to the Rhine.
10:56But I want you to see
10:57what delivering that answer
10:59actually looked like.
11:00Because the manuals
11:01do not describe it.
11:03It looked like a man
11:05walking toward a fortified line
11:06in the dark
11:07carrying 50 pounds of TNT
11:09on his back.
11:1150 pounds.
11:12Per man.
11:14Hold that figure.
11:15In the next part,
11:16you'll meet three engineers
11:18who were ordered to carry it
11:19across open ground
11:20behind a tank
11:21and then told
11:22the tank wasn't coming.
11:25December 18, 1944.
11:28The village of Schweighofen
11:30on the border between Alsace
11:32and the German Palatinate.
11:3422 American engineers
11:35are getting ready to walk
11:36half a mile.
11:38Each of them is carrying
11:3950 pounds of TNT.
11:41Their target is a stretch
11:43of dragon's teeth
11:44at a place called Kapsvaya.
11:46The order is simple
11:47and it is the order
11:48the U.S. Army
11:49had been giving
11:50since the first day
11:51it touched this line.
11:52Blow a gap wide enough
11:54to let armor through.
11:56Now picture the walk.
11:58Half a mile of open border
12:00farmland in December.
12:02No cover worth the name.
12:04And the Germans know
12:05precisely where the teeth are
12:07because they poured them.
12:09The party gets part way.
12:11A German sentry
12:12sees them and fires.
12:14The sentry's shot
12:15brings artillery.
12:17Machine gun fire
12:18comes in on top of it.
12:1922 men lying flat in a field
12:22with 1,100 pounds
12:23of high explosive
12:24spread among them
12:25and not one of them
12:26able to stand up.
12:28They came back
12:29with one prisoner
12:30and no gap.
12:32That is the part of the doctrine
12:33nobody writes into the manual.
12:35The explosive works.
12:37Getting the explosive
12:38to the concrete
12:39is the problem.
12:40And the concrete
12:41never moves.
12:42So the Germans
12:43only have to guard
12:43one address.
12:46Three months later.
12:47Same battalion.
12:48Same stretch of teeth.
12:50March 20th, 1945.
12:53After dark.
12:54A lieutenant named Hewitt
12:56gives his platoon
12:57the mission
12:57and the conditions
12:58in the same breath.
12:59It's darker than all hell.
13:02The men load up
13:03and go into Copsvaya on foot.
13:05One of them wrote afterward
13:07that the platoon staggered
13:08down the street
13:09under the weight of TNT
13:10and that buildings
13:11on both sides of the street
13:12were burning
13:13and cast an eerie glow.
13:16Read that again.
13:16They are walking
13:18through a burning town
13:19lit from both sides
13:21carrying the most flammable load
13:23in the United States Army.
13:25At the last building in town
13:27they reach the command post
13:28of the 68th Infantry
13:29and there they hear
13:31what the infantry patrol
13:32had reported
13:32about the obstacle
13:33in front of them.
13:34Only a small number of them
13:35manage to crawl
13:36through the teeth.
13:38Crawl.
13:39Not walk.
13:40That is what four rows
13:42of concrete
13:42does to men on foot
13:44even when nobody
13:45is defending it well.
13:47They set the charges
13:48at the roadside.
13:49One of them remembered
13:51that a thousand thoughts
13:52went through the men's heads.
13:53Then,
13:54a lightning flash.
13:56300 pounds of TNT
13:58illuminated the night.
14:00300 pounds.
14:03For one gap.
14:05Here is where I want you
14:06to do the arithmetic with me
14:08because this is the hinge
14:09of the entire story.
14:11The Siegfried Line
14:13ran 630 kilometers.
14:15Nearly 400 miles.
14:18If a gap costs
14:19300 pounds of explosive
14:21carried by hand
14:22through a burning village
14:23at night,
14:24then breaking that line
14:26by the book
14:26is not a tactical problem.
14:28It is an industrial impossibility.
14:32You would run out of engineers
14:33long before Germany
14:34ran out of concrete.
14:36And the Germans understood
14:38that arithmetic perfectly.
14:40Which is why they covered
14:41the teeth with fire.
14:42March 22nd, 1945.
14:45Steinfeld.
14:46The infantry has run
14:48into heavily armed pillboxes
14:50and has stopped.
14:51A colonel wants a path
14:52through the teeth immediately.
14:54Three men are named for it.
14:56Sergeant F. Johnston,
14:58Private First Class E. Lucian,
15:00Private First Class P. DeChico.
15:03Their orders are to follow
15:04a medium tank forward
15:05and work in its shadow.
15:06No tank was available.
15:09So the men decided
15:10to go without it.
15:11Sit with that sentence.
15:13It is one line
15:14in a battalion history
15:15almost nobody has read.
15:17Three men,
15:19told the armor isn't coming,
15:20going anyway.
15:22They got about 200 yards.
15:24Then a rocket barrage
15:26came down
15:26and sniper fire
15:27and they went
15:28into the dirt.
15:3025 yards ahead of them,
15:32two infantry men
15:32crossing the same ground
15:34were cut down
15:34by a machine gun
15:35and killed.
15:37The infantry waved
15:38the engineers back.
15:39They went back
15:40to the command post.
15:42Four more men
15:43were added to the party.
15:44This time,
15:45a tank was found.
15:46They went out again
15:47and under constant shelling,
15:49they placed the charges.
15:50In about 10 minutes
15:51after the charges
15:52were set off,
15:53the first of the tanks
15:54passed through.
15:5610 minutes.
15:58That is what the gap
15:59was worth
15:59once it existed.
16:01This is what it cost.
16:04In the first squad,
16:06technician 5th grade
16:07Carlo Cascegno
16:08and Joseph Fallat
16:09were killed in action,
16:10caught by a rocket barrage
16:12against the concrete rim
16:13that borders the teeth.
16:15Three more men
16:16were wounded.
16:17Two men dead,
16:19three wounded,
16:20two attempts,
16:22one gap.
16:23Now multiply that
16:25by 400 miles
16:26of frontier
16:27and tell me
16:28the American army
16:29was going to blow
16:29its way into Germany.
16:31It wasn't.
16:32And by that march,
16:34it already knew
16:35it wasn't.
16:35Because somewhere
16:36in the same battalion,
16:38on the same day,
16:39in the same fields,
16:41another officer
16:42had stopped thinking
16:43about the problem
16:43as demolition at all.
16:45His name
16:46was John Delmay.
16:47He was not carrying
16:48explosive.
16:49He had gone to find
16:51a vehicle with a blade
16:52on the front of it,
16:53and he was about
16:54to take it toward
16:54the German line
16:55in daylight
16:55and do the job
16:57with earth
16:58instead of powder.
17:00What happened
17:00to him
17:01in the next few minutes
17:02is the reason
17:03the American army
17:04stopped trying
17:04to break
17:05the Siegfried line
17:06and started trying
17:07to bury it.
17:08March 22, 1945.
17:12Steinfeld again,
17:13a few hours
17:14after those three engineers
17:15came back
17:15from the teeth.
17:17There is an anti-tank
17:18ditch in front
17:19of the American advance,
17:20and the 2nd Platoon
17:21has been given
17:22the job
17:22of filling it in
17:23by hand
17:25with shovels
17:26in front of
17:27a German line
17:28in daylight.
17:30A lieutenant
17:31named John Delmay
17:32looked at that order
17:33and went to find
17:34a machine instead.
17:35What he came back
17:37with was a tank
17:37recovery vehicle
17:38with a dozer blade
17:40mounted on the front,
17:41an open turret affair
17:42as the battalion
17:43history describes it.
17:45Open,
17:46meaning the man
17:47commanding it
17:48stands up in it
17:49with his head
17:50and chest
17:50above the armor
17:51because that is
17:52the only way
17:52to see the blade
17:53and the ground
17:54in front of it.
17:55He drove it forward
17:56and filled the ditch.
17:58Despite enemy fire
17:59is the phrase
18:00in the record,
18:01which is the army's
18:02way of saying
18:03he did it
18:03while they were
18:04shooting at him
18:04and did not stop.
18:06Then,
18:06as the vehicle
18:07came back in
18:08toward the American lines,
18:09a German 88
18:10put a direct hit on it.
18:12Both of Lieutenant Delmay's
18:14legs were crushed.
18:15He died several days later.
18:18He was not born an American.
18:20He was from Brussels.
18:22What the battalion
18:23wrote down
18:23about why he was there
18:24was that he wanted
18:25to fight
18:25for a better world.
18:27Now,
18:28why did that ditch
18:30matter enough
18:31to send an officer
18:32into an 88's
18:33field of fire?
18:35Because of what
18:36a blade does
18:36that explosive cannot.
18:38Think back
18:39to those 22 men
18:40walking half a mile
18:41through open farmland
18:43in December
18:43with 50 pounds
18:45on each back.
18:46Every one of them
18:47had to arrive,
18:48on foot,
18:49and stand at the obstacle,
18:51and stay there
18:52long enough
18:53to set a charge.
18:54The German defense
18:55was designed
18:56to make exactly
18:57that impossible.
18:59A blade
19:00changes the terms.
19:01Nobody dismounts.
19:03Nobody stands still
19:04at the concrete.
19:05The work happens
19:07while the machine
19:07is moving,
19:08behind armor,
19:09and the man doing it
19:10is one man
19:11instead of 22.
19:12And there is a deeper difference.
19:14And this is the one
19:15to hold onto
19:16for the rest
19:16of this story.
19:18Explosive has to
19:19defeat the obstacle.
19:21Earth doesn't.
19:22Earth only has to
19:24change the shape
19:24of the ground
19:25the obstacle
19:26is standing on.
19:27The teeth stay.
19:28The ditch stays.
19:30They simply
19:31stop mattering.
19:33Now let me show you
19:34how that looked
19:35from the other side.
19:36Because there is a German
19:37who explained it
19:38better than any
19:39American report
19:40I've found.
19:41In February 1945,
19:44a New York Times
19:45correspondent
19:45named Harold Denny
19:47sat in on interrogations
19:49of German prisoners
19:49on the Western Front.
19:51One of them
19:52was an SS Panzer Grenadier,
19:54a high school student
19:56before the war.
19:57He had been watching
19:58the American rear areas
20:00roll past him.
20:01Truckloads of soldiers,
20:03trucks of ammunition,
20:05gasoline in five-gallon cans,
20:07and,
20:08in Denny's list
20:09of what the young German
20:10was staring at,
20:11tanks,
20:12bulldozers,
20:13and field guns.
20:15Stop on that list.
20:17A German combat soldier,
20:18describing what beat him,
20:20put a construction machine
20:21in between two weapons
20:23and did not notice
20:24he had done it.
20:25And then he said this,
20:27This material superiority
20:29of yours,
20:29we simply cannot believe it.
20:31And then,
20:33what do we have
20:34to win with?
20:35He was not being poetic,
20:37he was being accurate
20:38about his own defeat.
20:40Because by that winter,
20:42the thing had already
20:43stopped being support equipment
20:45and started being
20:46a threat on its own.
20:48In January 1945,
20:50in the Ardennes,
20:51the 202nd Engineer
20:53Combat Battalion
20:54was working in front
20:55of the 17th Airborne Division
20:57around Hufaliz,
20:59clearing rubble,
21:00opening roads,
21:01the invisible work.
21:03A man in A Company
21:05named Andy Yoder
21:06was out ahead
21:07on a bulldozer.
21:09The battalion's
21:10own account of it
21:11is one sentence long,
21:12and I have never
21:13forgotten it.
21:15Andy Yoder
21:15was credited
21:16with taking an entire town
21:18alone
21:18with his bulldozer.
21:19He was busy
21:20doing his work,
21:21as advanced elements
21:22of the 17th Airborne
21:24moved cautiously
21:25in behind him.
21:26Understand what that means.
21:28The Germans in that town
21:30did not surrender
21:31to an assault.
21:32They looked at
21:33what was coming up the road,
21:35a machine with a blade,
21:36unhurried,
21:37that was not going
21:38to negotiate with a wall
21:39or a barricade
21:40or a doorway.
21:42And they left.
21:43Or they gave up.
21:45That is not a story
21:46about horsepower.
21:48That is a story
21:49about what happens
21:50to a defender's nerve
21:51when the thing
21:52approaching him
21:53is not trying to kill him.
21:54It is simply going
21:55to remove the ground
21:57he is standing on.
21:58And that,
21:59finally,
22:00is the moment
22:00this becomes a real war
22:02between two systems.
22:04Because the Germans
22:05saw it too.
22:06By January 1945,
22:08American Rifle Company
22:10commanders
22:10were being asked
22:11to write down
22:11what actually worked
22:13against Siegfried Line
22:14pillboxes,
22:14and their answers
22:15were printed
22:16and circulated
22:17through the U.S. Army.
22:18One of those answers
22:19describes the blade
22:20being used
22:21in a way
22:21no engineer manual
22:22had authorized.
22:23And in the very next sentence,
22:26same paragraph,
22:27same page,
22:28an American officer
22:29warns that it may
22:30stop working.
22:32Not because the Germans
22:33had built better concrete,
22:35because they had begun
22:36building something
22:37specifically,
22:38deliberately,
22:39exclusively
22:40to kill the machine.
22:42I'll show you
22:43both sentences next.
22:44They are the whole war
22:46in two lines.
22:47Here are the two sentences.
22:49In January 1945,
22:51the U.S. Army
22:52asked Rifle Company
22:53commanders
22:54who had actually
22:55taken Siegfried Line
22:56pillboxes
22:57how they did it.
22:58The answers were printed
23:00and circulated
23:00across the theater
23:01so that a lieutenant
23:02arriving in March
23:03would not have to learn
23:05in blood
23:05what a lieutenant
23:06in October
23:07had already paid for.
23:09This is the first sentence.
23:11A demolition charge
23:13can be used,
23:14tanks can blast
23:15in the rear
23:15of the pillboxes,
23:17or a tank dozer
23:18can cover the door
23:19and embrasures
23:20with dirt.
23:22Notice how flat that is.
23:24Third option in a list.
23:26No emphasis.
23:27Nothing to tell you
23:28that the last clause
23:29of that sentence
23:30is what unlocked
23:31the western frontier
23:32of Germany.
23:34Hear it now.
23:35You'll hear it again
23:36in a few minutes
23:37when you know
23:38what it did
23:38to the men
23:39on the other side
23:39of the concrete.
23:41Here is the second sentence,
23:43the one that follows
23:44it immediately.
23:45The use of tank dozers
23:46may not prove successful
23:47in the future
23:47because the Jerrys
23:49are planting mines,
23:50some of them activated
23:51by remote control,
23:52as a countermeasure.
23:54Read that again,
23:55slowly,
23:57because of what it admits
23:58about both armies.
24:00The Germans were now
24:01laying minefields
24:03designed around
24:03one American vehicle,
24:05not around tanks
24:07in general,
24:08not around infantry,
24:09around the machine
24:11with the blade.
24:12And some of those mines
24:14were command detonated.
24:16Which means this.
24:18Somewhere back
24:19in the treeline,
24:20there is a German soldier
24:21holding a firing device,
24:23sitting still,
24:24watching a patch of ground,
24:26and his entire purpose
24:27in this war,
24:28on this morning,
24:29is to wait
24:30for a bulldozer.
24:33That is where I would
24:34put a marker
24:34if I were writing
24:35the history of this campaign.
24:37A nation that had poured
24:39a third of its cement
24:40into a wall
24:41was now assigning men
24:42to sit in the woods
24:43and wait for a piece
24:44of construction equipment.
24:46And the mines
24:47were the second layer.
24:48The first layer
24:49was older and simpler,
24:50and it is worth
24:51watching at work.
24:53March 22, 1945,
24:565 in the morning,
24:58Steinfeld.
24:59The infantry jumps off at 5.
25:02The engineers are to have
25:03the road clear by 6.
25:05The orders are to remove
25:06all barriers,
25:08clear debris,
25:09and fill the anti-tank ditch.
25:11They dismount
25:12and move down the road
25:13in extended order.
25:15About 300 yards
25:16from the dragon's teeth,
25:17they were forced
25:18to the ground.
25:20One of them tried afterward
25:21to describe what the obstacle
25:23looked like at that moment,
25:24and what he came up with
25:25was a 4th of July flower pot.
25:28The whole belt of concrete
25:29lit up and spitting.
25:32Jerry, he wrote,
25:33had decided to cover it with fire.
25:36There is your answer
25:37to the question
25:37from the first part
25:38of this story.
25:39Why did earth work
25:40on a farm road
25:41at Oberforstbach
25:43and fail in a highway crater
25:45at Rötgen?
25:47Because the farm,
25:48crossing a few hundred yards
25:49down that secondary road,
25:51was not covered
25:52by anybody's fire,
25:53and the highway at Rötgen
25:55was,
25:56the material was never
25:57the contest.
25:58The observation was,
26:01and the Germans made them pay
26:02for every yard
26:03of observed ground.
26:05A road barrier
26:06ahead of the engineers
26:07was covered
26:08by a machine gun nest,
26:09and the party
26:10walked into it.
26:12Lieutenant Copes
26:12was hit and evacuated.
26:14Staff Sergeant Thomas
26:16took over.
26:17What happened next
26:18is one of my favorite
26:19few minutes
26:20in any engineer record.
26:22Private First Class
26:23Stutz
26:23and Technician
26:24Fourth Grade Seitz
26:25worked around
26:26the flank of the gun.
26:28Sergeant Ray Hodson
26:30got himself
26:30into the window
26:31of a house
26:32at an oblique angle
26:33to the nest.
26:34And Seitz
26:35charged the position,
26:36shouting at the Germans
26:38in a phrase
26:38the battalion history
26:39politely cuts off
26:41halfway through.
26:42He had already
26:43fired the clip
26:44in his rifle.
26:45It was empty.
26:46He charged them
26:47with an empty rifle.
26:50Private First Class
26:51Oldenburg
26:51talked the crew
26:52into coming out.
26:53Then a shell fragment
26:55caught Oldenburg
26:56and he was evacuated too.
26:57The engineers
26:58got into the cellars,
26:59the only safe places
27:01in Steinfeld,
27:02while the Germans
27:03poured in everything
27:04they had,
27:05including the kitchen sink.
27:06And the town
27:07was gradually reduced
27:08to a mass of rubble.
27:11Corporal Shelley
27:12and Corporal Breedlove
27:13were hit at the
27:14Treadway Bridge.
27:15Private First Class
27:16Wrencher
27:17took a fragment
27:17in the leg.
27:18They came out
27:20in darkness.
27:21And one more
27:22from that same 48 hours,
27:24because it is the only
27:25place in this story
27:26where the machinery
27:27turns on the men
27:28who brought it.
27:30The night before,
27:31two soldiers,
27:32Private First Class
27:33Robert Snodgrass
27:34and Private First Class
27:36Nicholas Pusey
27:37had dug a foxhole.
27:39In the dark,
27:40a tank retriever
27:41drove over the position.
27:43Pusey was badly
27:44injured in the back.
27:46Snodgrass,
27:47before he could be reached,
27:48had suffocated.
27:50Killed in the dark
27:51by the weight
27:52of his own army's equipment,
27:54a few hundred yards
27:55from a wall
27:56built by men
27:56who never saw him.
27:58So by the third week
27:59of March,
27:59the Germans had their
28:00answer to the blade.
28:02Mines with a hand
28:03on the switch
28:03and fire on every yard
28:05of concrete.
28:07The obvious American response
28:09was heavier armor
28:10or working only at night.
28:13They did neither.
28:14They changed the target.
28:16And the first crews
28:18to point a blade
28:19at the pillbox
28:19found something
28:20four years of German
28:22engineering
28:22had never accounted for.
28:24March 19, 1945.
28:27Oberotterbach
28:27on the German side
28:28of the Alsatian border.
28:30The 36th Infantry Division
28:32has come up
28:33against the pyramided
28:34concrete obstacles
28:35and the pillboxes
28:36behind them.
28:37And it is going to do this
28:38the old way,
28:39one strong point
28:40at a time.
28:42Here is the old way
28:43in the division's own words.
28:46Infantry cut the wire
28:47that hemmed in the defenders,
28:48chased the Germans
28:50from their trenches
28:50into the cover
28:51of the concrete enclosures,
28:52then kept these
28:53buttoned up under fire
28:55while the engineers
28:56crept up to lay
28:57special demolition charges
28:58at doors and apertures.
29:00Now hold on
29:01to the next sentence
29:02because it explains
29:03why the American army
29:04went looking for another way.
29:07A sharp blast
29:08and the enemy
29:09might come running out
29:10in surrender.
29:11Or, safely undercover,
29:13he might counter
29:14by calling down
29:14mortar fire
29:15on his own position.
29:17That is the coin flip
29:18American engineers
29:19were living on.
29:20You crawl to the door
29:21of a fort with a charge.
29:22You set it.
29:23You blow it.
29:24And then it's even money
29:26whether the men inside
29:26come out with their hands up
29:28or call their own artillery
29:29down onto the concrete
29:30they're sitting in.
29:31Which means on to you.
29:33The 2nd Battalion
29:35of the 142nd
29:36took 54 pillboxes
29:37that way.
29:38The 1st Battalion
29:39of the 141st
29:40cleared 35.
29:42Every one
29:43a separate coin flip
29:45with American engineers
29:46standing at the door.
29:48Now here's the other way.
29:50Same war,
29:51same month,
29:52same kind of pillbox.
29:55The dozer comes forward.
29:56It does not attack
29:58the embrasure.
29:59It plows earth into it.
30:00And when the garrison
30:02still would not come out,
30:03the blade went
30:04to the 2nd step.
30:05And the 2nd step
30:06is the one
30:07that ends arguments.
30:08It buried the exits.
30:11The American Record notes,
30:12without any drama at all,
30:14that the occupants
30:15usually surrendered
30:16before that final step.
30:17I want you to sit
30:18inside that pillbox
30:19with me for a moment.
30:21Because I don't think
30:22the sentence lands
30:23until you do.
30:25You are in a concrete box
30:27with walls up to
30:28three and a half meters thick.
30:30Nothing the Americans
30:31have brought to this border
30:33can break it.
30:34And you know that.
30:35You have watched them try.
30:38You have watched charges
30:39go off on your door
30:40and leave your garrison alive.
30:43Then the light
30:44in your embrasure goes brown.
30:45And then it goes out.
30:47There is no explosion.
30:49That is the part
30:51that undoes men.
30:52No blast to brace for.
30:55No assault to shoot at.
30:57No moment
30:57where the enemy
30:58exposes himself
30:59and you get to fight back.
31:01There is a diesel engine.
31:03Very close.
31:04And the sound of soil arriving.
31:07Your firing slit is gone.
31:09Your second slit is gone.
31:12And you can hear the machine
31:13moving around
31:14to the back of the structure.
31:16Where the door is.
31:17Everything you have.
31:18The machine gun.
31:20The concrete.
31:21The interlocking fire
31:22that cost the 117th Infantry
31:25227 men in a single day.
31:28All of it depended
31:29on being able
31:30to see out.
31:32And nobody is taking
31:33that away by force.
31:35They are simply
31:36putting the ground back
31:37where a hill used to be.
31:40So they came out.
31:42And that is the answer
31:43to the question
31:44this whole story started with.
31:46The Americans never beat
31:48the Siegfried Line.
31:49Read that carefully
31:50because it is the opposite
31:52of what it sounds like.
31:54They didn't beat it.
31:55They made it irrelevant.
31:57Which is worse
31:58and which is permanent.
32:01A fort is not concrete.
32:03A fort is a machine
32:04for looking and shooting.
32:06And the concrete
32:07only protects
32:08the looking and the shooting.
32:10Explosive fights the concrete.
32:12Which is the strongest thing
32:14the Germans built.
32:15Earth attacks the looking.
32:17Which four years of construction
32:19could not make thicker.
32:21And now think about
32:22why the Germans
32:23could not answer it.
32:24Every countermeasure they had.
32:26The mines.
32:27The command detonated charges.
32:29The anti-tank guns.
32:30The interlocking fire.
32:32The whole logic of that wall.
32:34Was built to stop something
32:36trying to get in.
32:38Kill it at the wire
32:39and the wall holds.
32:41The blade
32:42was not trying to get in.
32:44It had no interest
32:45in the inside
32:46of that pillbox at all.
32:48It was rearranging
32:49the outside.
32:51There is a moment
32:52near the end of the war
32:54that says this better
32:54than I can.
32:56American troops
32:57took over a set
32:58of German barracks
32:59where the surrounding hills
33:00were studded with pillboxes.
33:02Every foot of ground
33:03covered by the fire
33:04of machine guns
33:05or 88s.
33:07The G.I.s
33:08walked around
33:08looking at it.
33:10What they said
33:11and somebody wrote it down
33:12was this.
33:14These krauts
33:15could have held out
33:16indefinitely
33:16if they had stayed
33:17in these pillboxes.
33:19If they had stayed.
33:21The fortifications,
33:23one of them noted,
33:24seem impregnable.
33:25The embrasures
33:26were empty.
33:27The only things
33:28still pointing out
33:29of that hillside
33:30were stovepipes.
33:31sooty,
33:33aimed at the sky.
33:34The Americans
33:35spent their days there
33:36sweeping mines,
33:37clearing roads,
33:38and sealing pillboxes
33:40shut with acetylene torches.
33:42Housekeeping
33:43in a fortress
33:44meant to hold
33:45for a generation.
33:47And that was one hillside.
33:49In the six weeks
33:50before it,
33:51the whole western wall
33:52of Germany
33:53came apart.
33:54And the collapse
33:54has a number
33:55attached to it.
33:56When you hear
33:57that number,
33:58you'll understand
33:59why the Westfall
34:00almost never appears
34:01in German post-war
34:03accounts as a defeat.
34:04February 6th, 1945.
34:07Four in the morning.
34:08A German village
34:09called Habscheid
34:10in the Eiffel,
34:11in snow.
34:12The 359th Infantry
34:15of the U.S. 90th Division
34:16is walking through
34:18the Siegfried Line.
34:19Not attacking it,
34:20walking through it.
34:22The division's own account
34:23uses the phrase
34:24picked its way
34:26undetected
34:27through the dragon's teeth,
34:29the minefields,
34:30the barbed wire,
34:31and the pillboxes.
34:33By daylight,
34:34Habscheid
34:35was in American hands.
34:37Compare that
34:38to what you already know.
34:40October 2nd,
34:41north of Aachen.
34:43227 casualties
34:44in one regiment
34:46in one day
34:47for 11 pillboxes.
34:49February 6th,
34:51in the Eiffel.
34:51A regiment goes
34:53through the wall
34:53in the dark
34:54and takes the town
34:55by breakfast.
34:56What changed
34:58in those four months
34:58was not the concrete.
35:00The concrete
35:01was exactly
35:02where it had always been.
35:04Here is what changed,
35:05and it starts
35:06the day before.
35:08On February 5th,
35:09the 90th Division
35:10put on a demonstration.
35:12Vehicles and armor
35:13moved freely
35:14in the front-line area.
35:15Artillery
35:16fired into the towns.
35:18Read that first sentence
35:20one more time.
35:21American vehicles
35:22and armor
35:23moving freely
35:24in the front-line area,
35:25in the open,
35:27in daylight,
35:28in front of the west wall.
35:30In September,
35:32engineers could not cross
35:33half a mile of farmland
35:34without being pinned.
35:36By February,
35:37the U.S. Army
35:38was driving around
35:39in front of that wall
35:40as a piece of theater
35:42to make the Germans
35:43look the wrong way
35:44while a regiment
35:45walked through the teeth
35:46in the dark.
35:48That is what happens
35:49when the fire
35:50comes off a fortification.
35:52And the fire
35:52came off it
35:53because for six months,
35:55American engineers
35:56had been methodically
35:57taking away
35:57the one thing
35:58that made it
35:59a fortification at all.
36:00the ability
36:01to see the ground
36:02in front of it
36:03and put rounds
36:04on that ground.
36:06Pillbox by pillbox.
36:07Slit by slit.
36:09Load of soil
36:10by load of soil.
36:12And once the observation
36:13was gone,
36:14the wall
36:15stopped being a wall.
36:17It became terrain.
36:19Awkward terrain,
36:20but terrain.
36:21And armies
36:22cross terrain
36:23for a living.
36:24Now let me give you
36:25the scale
36:26because this is where
36:27the arithmetic
36:28finally reverses.
36:29In February
36:30and early March 1945,
36:33the U.S. 3rd Army
36:34cleared the Eiffel.
36:35On March 11th,
36:37it drove from the Moselle
36:38into the Palatinate.
36:40On March 15th,
36:42the 7th Army
36:43opened its own offensive
36:44into the same ground.
36:45And by March 24th,
36:47it was finished.
36:48Nine days
36:50for the southern half.
36:51Weeks
36:52for the whole thing.
36:53Four years
36:54to build.
36:55500,000 men
36:57working on it
36:58at once.
36:58More than
36:5918,000 bunkers,
37:01tunnels,
37:02and tank traps.
37:03A third of a nation's
37:04cement
37:05in a single winter.
37:06And in the Rhineland,
37:08fighting,
37:09the Allies took
37:10more than
37:10200,000
37:11German prisoners.
37:13200,000!
37:15Think about the
37:16exchange rate
37:17in that number.
37:18Germany spent
37:18four years
37:19and half a million
37:20laborers
37:21on a line
37:21whose main achievement,
37:22in the end,
37:23was to concentrate
37:24200,000
37:25of its own soldiers
37:26where they could be
37:27captured.
37:28That is why
37:29you will look
37:29a long time
37:30for the Westfall
37:31in German post-war
37:32memoirs as a battle.
37:33There isn't one.
37:35No Stalingrad here,
37:36no Monte Cassino,
37:38no last stand
37:39in the rubble
37:39that a nation
37:40can tell itself
37:41stories about.
37:42The wall
37:43wasn't stormed,
37:44it was outflanked
37:45by a farm road,
37:46filled in,
37:47driven over,
37:48and left behind.
37:49And the men
37:50inside walked out
37:51into captivity,
37:52past concrete
37:53that was still,
37:53technically,
37:55undamaged.
37:56You cannot write
37:57a heroic chapter
37:58about that.
37:59So nobody did.
38:01And remember
38:02that young
38:02SS Grenadier
38:03in the interrogation
38:04room,
38:05the high school
38:05student,
38:06staring at the
38:07tanks and
38:08bulldozers
38:08and field guns
38:09going by?
38:10What do we have
38:11to win with?
38:13When I first
38:14read that line,
38:15I took it as
38:15a soldier's despair.
38:17I don't read it
38:18that way anymore.
38:19He was doing
38:20an inventory.
38:21He was comparing
38:22what his country
38:23had produced
38:23with what ours
38:24had,
38:25and he had
38:26noticed,
38:26sitting in a cage,
38:28with nothing left
38:29to do but count,
38:30that one of the
38:31things beating him
38:32was not a weapon
38:33at all.
38:34On the night
38:35of March 30,
38:361945,
38:37one of those
38:38engineer companies
38:39got the order
38:39to move.
38:41It was a beautiful
38:42moonlit night
38:42with a fierce coldness.
38:44They joined a long
38:46column of vehicles
38:47running with
38:47blackout lights,
38:48and one of them
38:49looked back down
38:50the line and saw
38:51them as a serpentine
38:52pattern in the dark.
38:54They crossed the Rhine
38:55at Vorms,
38:56on a pontoon bridge.
38:58The full moon
38:59played upon the water,
39:01lighting a pathway.
39:02Six months earlier,
39:03their army had needed
39:04half a day
39:05and 300 pounds
39:06of TNT
39:07to get through
39:08four rows of concrete
39:10on a country road.
39:11Now,
39:12they were driving
39:13across the Rhine
39:14on a bridge
39:15their own engineers
39:16had laid,
39:17in moonlight,
39:18and the wall
39:19was somewhere behind
39:20them in the dark,
39:21and nobody mentioned it.
39:22But the Siegfried line
39:23has one more chapter,
39:25and it is the strangest one.
39:27After the shooting stopped,
39:29the Allies looked at
39:31630 kilometers
39:32of German concrete
39:33and decided
39:34it had to go,
39:35and the job went
39:36to the same machines,
39:38doing the same thing
39:39they had done under fire,
39:41with nobody shooting back.
39:44What the war did
39:45to that wall
39:45in six months,
39:47peacetime finished,
39:49and there is a number
39:50for how much
39:51of it disappeared.
39:52Go back one last time
39:53to the farm track
39:54south of Oberfostbach.
39:56September 13th, 1944,
39:59mid-afternoon.
40:00An armored task force
40:02is stopped.
40:03Mortar fire
40:04is keeping the engineers
40:05off the concrete.
40:06The attack has failed.
40:08And the man
40:09whose name
40:10the United States Army
40:11never wrote down
40:12walks a few hundred yards
40:14along a secondary road,
40:16looks at a hump
40:17of stone and earth
40:18that German farmers
40:19had shoveled over the teeth
40:20so they could get
40:21their carts across,
40:22and goes back
40:23and tells somebody.
40:26That is the whole war
40:28in one image,
40:29if you want it.
40:31Four years of poured concrete
40:33on one side.
40:34On the other,
40:36an American nobody can name
40:38noticing something.
40:40Now let me tell you
40:41what happened to the wall.
40:42In 1946,
40:44the occupation authorities
40:45began pulling it down,
40:46and from 1950,
40:48the German federal administration
40:50made finishing the job
40:51a priority.
40:53Bunkers were blown.
40:55Dragon's teeth
40:56were blasted apart,
40:57and where blasting
40:58was too slow
40:59or too expensive,
41:00they were simply
41:01pushed into holes
41:02and covered over.
41:04In the French zone alone,
41:06by 1950,
41:08roughly 350,000 tons
41:11of concrete fortification
41:12had been demolished.
41:15350,000 tons.
41:18In one zone.
41:19And they did not finish.
41:21The thing was too big to finish.
41:24The larger bunkers
41:25resisted explosives.
41:27Miles of tunnel
41:28are still down there.
41:29Stretches of teeth
41:30still run through the woods
41:32in the Eiffel
41:32and along the Tsar.
41:33And since 1997,
41:36the Germans have protected
41:37what is left
41:38as a monument
41:39under a phrase
41:40hard to improve on.
41:42The value
41:43of the unpleasant.
41:45But notice how
41:46most of it went.
41:48Not broken.
41:49Buried.
41:51Pushed over.
41:52Filled in.
41:53Plowed across.
41:55Planted.
41:56Walk that border country
41:58today,
41:58and you are walking
41:59on a good deal of it.
42:01Farmers grow crops
42:03on top of the most
42:04expensive concrete
42:05Germany ever poured.
42:06The same answer,
42:07in peace,
42:08that the American engineers
42:09had found in war.
42:11You do not have
42:12to defeat concrete.
42:14You only have to put
42:15earth where it used
42:16to matter.
42:18And the men.
42:20Leander Doan,
42:21the colonel
42:21with ten tanks left
42:22at the end
42:23of that first day,
42:24stayed in the army.
42:26He commanded
42:27the 2nd Armored Division,
42:28retired as a major general,
42:30and died in 1964
42:31at 58.
42:33He is in Arlington.
42:36William Lovelady,
42:37whose task force
42:38had to blast its way
42:39through at Rotken
42:40because the dirt
42:41in the crater
42:41turned to muck,
42:43took his battalion
42:44through all five
42:45European campaigns.
42:47He lived until 1993.
42:50Lieutenant John Delmay,
42:52who went to find
42:52a machine so his men
42:53would not have to fill
42:54an anti-tank ditch
42:55with shovels,
42:57died of the wounds
42:58the 88 gave him.
43:00He was from Brussels.
43:02The reason his battalion
43:03recorded for why
43:05he was in that vehicle
43:06was that he wanted
43:07to fight for a better world.
43:09Carlo Casenio
43:10and Joseph Villott
43:11were killed
43:11at the concrete rim
43:13that bordered the teeth
43:14at Steinfeld,
43:15yards short of a gap
43:16that took ten minutes
43:17to use once it existed.
43:20Robert Snodgrass
43:21suffocated
43:22in his own foxhole
43:23in the dark
43:24before anyone
43:25could reach him.
43:26and Andy Yoder
43:27of A Company
43:28who took a town
43:29alone with a bulldozer
43:31while paratroopers
43:32came in behind him.
43:34I looked
43:34and the record
43:35gives him one sentence
43:37and then closes.
43:39I don't know
43:40what happened to him.
43:42That is true
43:43of most of them.
43:44The men who did
43:45this work
43:46were not written about
43:47because what they did
43:48does not photograph
43:49like a battle.
43:51There is no monument
43:52at Oberforstbach
43:52to whoever found
43:54that farm crossing.
43:56There is a road
43:57and there are fields
43:58and in places
43:59the teeth still come up
44:01out of the grass
44:02like something the ground
44:03refuses to digest.
44:05So here is the answer
44:07to the question
44:07we started with.
44:08As plainly as I can put it,
44:10Germany spent four years,
44:12half a million men
44:13and a third of its cement
44:14building a wall
44:16to stop an army.
44:17The American army
44:18did not break that wall
44:20because it did not need to.
44:22It worked out
44:23that a fortification
44:24is not concrete.
44:25It is eyesight.
44:27And then it took
44:28the eyesight away
44:29with dirt,
44:30a blade,
44:31and a young man
44:32standing up
44:33in an open turret
44:34because that was
44:35the only way
44:36to see the ground.
44:38Four years
44:39of the strongest material
44:40a country could produce,
44:42undone by the cheapest
44:43material on earth,
44:44moved by men
44:46who mostly did not
44:47think of themselves
44:47as fighting at all.
44:49That is not a small
44:50thing to be.
44:52Somebody has to be
44:53the one who looks
44:54at four rows of concrete
44:55and thinks about
44:56the shape of the ground
44:57instead of the strength
44:58of the wall.
45:00The American army
45:01was full of men
45:02who did.
45:03They were fixing
45:04the road.
45:07Thank you for staying
45:08to the end of this one.
45:09If it was worth your time,
45:11a like genuinely helps.
45:13It pushes the story
45:14of these American engineers
45:15in front of people
45:16who would want it
45:17and would otherwise
45:18never see it.
45:19Subscribe
45:20and turn on the bell
45:21if you'd like more
45:22because this channel
45:23goes looking
45:23for the parts of the war
45:25that were written down once
45:26in a battalion report
45:27and then sat in a file
45:29for 80 years.
45:31And tell me in the comments
45:32where you are watching from.
45:34If your father,
45:35grandfather,
45:36or uncle
45:36served in the Second World War,
45:38I would like to know
45:39his name and his unit.
45:41Put it below.
45:42Those names deserve
45:44to be typed out somewhere.