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The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Donald Maurice Brener and Scott Brener.

Buck said the woods he fought in Hürtgen Forest were so thick you could only see the two guys on either side of you. They fought through the winter of '44 - '45, one of the coldest in European history with the temperature going below zero on the fahrenheit scale. They slept out in the mud or the snow often without shelter and Buck once told me none of them ever caught a cold. They went day after day on cold rations since any kind of smoke would attract the German artillery. After the war Buck would never eat Spam™, saying he had been forced to eat it cold too many times during the war.
In March, he and his buddies crossed the Rhine river on a pontoon bridge next to the captured Ludendorff railroad bridge at Remagen. I think he said it had already collapsed by that time. The Germans attacked the bridge with jet fighters. The 28th Regiment moved on Köln (Cologne) and swung north. Then they went on occupation duty trying to establish law and order in the part of Germany under Allied control.
Sometime during all this Buck was wounded by a German tank shell but since he had shed no blood, he did not qualify for a "purple heart" medal [Not so. A bleeding wound is not required for the award according to an email from Lt. Col. Sprengle. I will have to check out the paperwork.] I have posted the V-Mail Vi sent him when he was in the hospital. It is dated 26 April 1945 and is addressed to Pvt. Donald Brener, 3rd Bn.Hq.Com.28th Inf. He was supposed to be shipped home, but slipped out of the hospital and rejoined his outfit to finish his war.
On 1 May the 8th Division was sent north to cross the Elbe and protect British Gen. Bernard Montgomery's drive to Wismar, cutting off the Danish peninsula in order to prevent Denmark from being "liberated" by the advancing Soviet Army. The 28th Regiment became a part of "Task Force Canham" under the command of Brig. General Charles D.W. Canham. More than a hundred cities, towns, and villages, including the large air base of Hagenow fell to the 8th Division that day. Buck finally got to see a Messerschmidt jet fighter up close. All along the task force's route of advance large groups of enemy troops awaited surrender. Roads were jammed with steady streams of prisoners. Near the town of Sulsdorf they found a complete V-Bomb assembly plant was with over 60 V-1 bombs ready to launch and enough nitro-glycerine and ammunition to level or badly damage everything within a twenty mile area. Buck saw the liberation of about 2,500 near-starved political prisoners at the concentration camp KZ-Wöbbelin and watched as the people of the town were forced to walk through the camp and bear witness.
Near the end of the war a German colonel on horseback surrendered to Buck. Buck got to keep his horse as souvenir. He also got the colonel's saddle, binoculars and holster. In fact, he later told one of his hometown friends that they took the colonel's entire uniform and left him walking down the road in his underwear! Buck somehow found a way to get "his" horse back to the U.S., but the horse had to be slaughtered to feed German prisoners before Buck could complete his scheme.
"Task Force Canham" received orders to halt when it reached Lake Schwerin. More than 80,000 Germans came in convoys of motor vehicles, tractors and trailers, horse drawn carts and on foot to surrender. Among them were ten German generals including the 27th Corps commander and his subordinates. The Seventh Panzer Division or what was left of it, totaling 2,500 drove into the 28th's area in their tanks to surrender. They came to escape the Soviets. At least one million German P.O.W.'s died in Soviet captivity as retribution for the estimated 3.5 to 4.5 million Soviet P.O.W.'s killed by the Nazis. The 8th Division linked up with the Russians east of Schwerin, Germany. The war ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of German forces on all fronts, which was to take effect on 8 May 1945 at 11:01 p.m. Then Buck and the other soldiers of the 8th Infantry Division were ordered to report for months of training in Texas in preparation for "Operation CORONET", the second part of "Operation DOWNFALL", the planned invasion of Japan.
The first part was to be "Operation Olympic". During the early morning hours of November 1, 1945 after an unprecedented naval and aerial bombardment, 14 combat divisions of American soldiers and marines were to be landed on Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese home islands. On March 1, 1946, after Kyushu was secured as a base of operations, "Operation Coronet" would swing into action. 28 divisions were scheduled to land on the main island of Honshu. Landing to the south of Tokyo would be the troops of the 4th, 6th, 8th, 24th, 31st, 32nd, 37th, 38th, and 87th Infantry Divisions, along with the 13th and 20th Armored Divisions. They were to strike north and east to clear the long western shore of Tokyo Bay, and try to go as far as Yokohama. Yokohama is Japan's second largest city and is 30 Km. south of Tokyo itself. Some estimates called for a combined loss of 1,000 deaths per hour in the initial landings with a final death toll of more than one million. It may have been very fortunate for all of them that the war in the Pacific ended before they were needed.
Buck somehow managed to make the trip from Texas back to Wisconsin every weekend. When the war finally ended, he left the service and went home for good. In Aug, 1950, due to the "Police Action" in South Korea, the 28th Infantry Regiment was reactivited, again as part of the 8th Division. It served as a training regiment at Ft. Jackson, SC. But by then Buck had a family and he didn't go.
Even though this 2 years was only a small part of Buck's life, it truly was the adventure of his generation. So I just want to say "THANKS!" Thanks to Buck and all the other guys who went away to war as young boys and came back as grown men. And Thanks to the Moms and Dads like Vi and M.F. who let their boys go, waited at home, and hoped against hope that no one would ever stop at their door with a telegram from the War Department. Thanks especially to all those boys who paid the price and never made it back home. We will never know what differences those missing boys might have made if they could have lived out their days in peace. But we do know what a difference they made to what our world is like today.
For all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest of these: 'It might have been.'
-- Whittier, Maud Muller --

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