Mannheim

We drove through Ludwigshaven and crossed the Rhine on the long, swaying, Ernie Pyle pontoon bridge. From the ruins of Mannheim (dead rotting in the rubble, no civilians on the streets), we turned east, and going uphill, entered beautiful country very like the Catskill Mountains. Heidelberg stood undamaged by the lovely Neckar River, but we continued through it and eventually crossed the Danube at Ulm on another pontoon bridge.

…

Everywhere we went, enemy soldiers flowed to the roads like rivulets running downhill after a rain. We relieved them of their watches, pistols, and binoculars and sent them on their way to rear echelon, for we couldn’t be bothered with them now; there were just too many of them

…

We sunbathed on the breaks and spent each night in a village, where we commandeered the dwellings and bade the civilians be on their way till morning. We ate fried eggs and canned beef and drank the liquors of a continent, ranging from French cognac and German schnapps to Russian vodka and Hungarian kirsch. We slept between sheets and took hot baths, and nobody traveled without a corkscrew, a frying pan, and a radio. Though it was forbidden by the clean-minded young men at S.H.A.E.F. (farther in the rear than ever before), some of us even fraternized with the local Mädchen. Kommen Sie here, baby!

—David Kenyon Webster, Parachute Infantry, (New York: Dell Publishing, 1994), 225-226.