Harry Jacobs

“At first I went through a medical training in Camp Grand in Illinois. Due to my education at Georgetown, during the training I was selected and reassigned to the military intelligence, where I learnt a wide range of intelligence skills.”

“We set out for Normandy in a landing ship. We approached the Utah Beach, jumped to the water and waded to the land. The 4th armored division was not deployed at the time of the invasion. We arrived there several weeks later.”

“We were told that one German soldier was hiding in the vicinity. I volunteered to get him. I had my .45 caliber gun, carbine, and grenades. But it was not necessary to use the weapons. When he saw me, he surrendered immediately. He was afraid of surrendering to the French. I took him to a POW camp and that was it. He was the only soldier whom I have personally taken captive during the war.”

“We were advancing southward towards Czechoslovakia. We crossed the border near a small town, the name of which I have already forgotten. We reached the Sudetenland area. The villages were intact, but nearly without any people. The first larger town was Sušice, but we eventually ended up a bit further east, in Strakonice.”

“On May 10th, our small intelligence unit No. 24 received an order to cross the demarcation line and to find the staff of the German eastern army, which was to retreat somewhere east of Prague. There was supposed to be an archive there, which contained information about the Red Army during the entire eastern campaign.”

“We got all the way to the Germans and we had their intelligence officer summoned. At first I wanted to know who they actually were. They told me that they had retreated from eastern Prussia and that they were the last operating staff of the German army. Then they led us to a row of trucks, and there we met a colonel whom we informed that we had been ordered to find out what documents about the Russians they had. He was very pleased. He led us to the truck where he showed us documents about the command structure of the Red army, records about the enemy units, their weaponry, strength, and other intelligence documents. They had a full truck of it. We told him that we were taking the truck and that two people were able to go with us. He and the driver. He was very happy.”