Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:47 | The sight of the first modern superhighway, the Autobahn, was stunning for Bud Sosebee when he traveled on one in the waning days of the war. Stunning in a different way was the sight of stacks of civilian bodies in the last town contested. He had just dodged an anti-tank rocket but was still upset at the deaths and he reveals why there were so many.
Keywords : Bud Sosebee tank highway Autobahn German Eilenburg Germany Russian civilian artillery Purple Heart anti-tank Torgau
Bud Sosebee was drafted just after high school and eventually became an infantry radio operator. Two things he wanted to do in the military did not materialize for him but he achieved both, eventually, becoming both a pilot and an engineer.
Bud Sosebee got a last bit of training in England in rescue school, where he was impressed with the stoic English. Less impressed with Le Havre when he deployed there, he scrounged some souvenirs from a German rocket site. One of them made a funny little noise.
Near Aachen, Germany, Bud Sosebee saw part of the Maginot Line with the huge pillboxes he'd seen in movies. Later he was at the famous last bridge at Remagen when it was finally destroyed. His unit had to cross on a pontoon bridge and in the next town, there was a most welcome sight, a Red Cross coffee and doughnut truck.
It sounded cruel, come out or we will set this gasoline on fire and burn you out. But it worked and the Germans came out of the bunker where they were holed up, without a loss on either side. As they moved on, Bud Sosebee found a pile of German cash in a shelled out building and gathered it up. After the war, he put it to good use.
Just before Bud Sosebee's unit linked up with the Russian Army, they accepted the surrender of an enemy garrison, negotiated by a German officer raised in New York. As they all laughed together over a request for chewing gum, Bud knew the war was over.
He saw Russian tanks crossing the river using pontoon skirts around the sides. When the tanks rumbled up and a hatch opened, Bud Sosebee could hardly believe his eyes. That was his last surprise of the war. He waited a while in Bremerhaven learning to speak German, then it was home.
Asked why he was awarded a Bronze Star, Bud Sosebee responds that he doesn't really know. He does know a couple of funny stories about precision German 88 targeting and he remembers a downed American airman right in the middle of the lines.
