1946 - A GI's Year in Occupied Germany

This graphic, first-hand account with over 150 never-before-seen photographs, takes the reader on a virtual trip back to 1946 to visit the US military occupation in Germany, and to vicariously experience infantry basic training, a winter crossing of the stormy North Atlantic on a Victory Ship, and existence in the ruins and rubble of the most destructive war in history. It covers the unique, short-lived period between cessation of hostilities and long-term military occupation, and will be of particular interest to veterans, military historians, World War 2 buffs, and readers interested in ships, European trains, military radio, and life in the 1940's.

During World War II, Allied bombers dropped over one million tons of explosives on Hitler's Germany. A single air raid on Würtzburg killed more than 5000 residents, and destroyed over 21,000 buildings 89 percent of the city in seventeen minutes . In 1946, war's immediate after effects - ruins of cities and towns that were bombed back into the stone age, and over five million men gone, created chaos. How did survivors cope? Where did they obtain necessities in a post war economy where skyrocketing inflation rendered a pack of cigarettes, a bar of soap, or a roll of toilet paper more valuable than thousands of Reichsmarks? And what was the relationship between German civilians and the occupiers of their Fatherland? These questions and more are answered by the author, one of the young recruits rushed into Germany to replace war weary veterans on occupation duty. His graphic, first hand account, with over 150 never before seen photographs, takes the reader back to 1946, to experience the aftermath of the most destructive war in world history.

Honorably discharged from the army in 1947, Roy Brown worked for twenty-five years in the pharmaceutical, and plastics, industries, while earning an AB in English, and an MBA in Marketing in evening classes. He spent the next 25 years in higher education, retiring in 1996 as an Asst. Prof. of Marketing . Licensed in 1961 with amateur radio call WA2TWS, he was a volunteer member of Air Force MARS during the Viet Nam conflict, and Deputy County Coordinator of Civil Defense (Emergency Management), throughout the Cold War. Now retired, and after the loss of his sweetheart for 44 years, he lives with their surviving cats, writes, operates his radio station, and occasionally paints watercolors.