Word: hammelburg
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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...March 1945 the 4th Armored Division of Patton's Third Army rested, out of breath, on a bridgehead along the Main. Some 50 miles northeast, near the town of Hammelburg, was a stalag filled with Allied prisoners of war. Hammelburg was in the path of General Alexander Patch's Seventh Army, which eventually would overrun it. But slashing Georgie Patton, at the pinnacle of his career, decided to take matters into his own hands. He ordered a task force of the 4th Division to deliver the prisoners...
...driving through, the Germans rushed in men and weapons, counterattacked with tanks. A German plane spotted Baum's column. All that day, in Gemünden, Baum and his men fought desperately. They freed 500 Russians from a stalag. Finally, with the remnants of their force, they assaulted Hammelburg...
...days later, Hammelburg was duly overrun by Patch's Seventh Army...
...Patton order such a desperate undertaking? One of the prisoners at Hammelburg was Patton's son-in-law, Lieut. Colonel John K. Waters, who was badly wounded in the fracas. Patton, denying that he even knew Waters was there when he launched the operation, displayed his personal diary to prove it; his motive, he said, was concern for all Allied prisoners. Some men (including Hearst Correspondent Austen Lake, who was with the Third Army at the time and told the story last week) wondered if Patton should not have shown more concern for his own soldiers. Major Baum, hospitalized...
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