346

Artillery colonel's scrapbook, including field maps and death camp photos.

Various places, 1944-1946
11 manuscripts, 20 photographs, 24 pieces of ephemera, and copious news clippings, mounted on or laid into 38 album leaves. Folio, 12 x 9 inches, original string-bound boards, generally minor wear.

This album was compiled by Colonel Paul H. Weiland (1895-1975) and his wife, of Medford, OR. He commanded the 40th Field Artillery in the final offensive across France and Germany. Highlights include:

Large hand-colored cartoon portrait captioned only "40," wearing a colonel's silver eagle on his collar; 20¾ x 16 inches, wear at folds, 1944. Likely Weiland; resembles his portrait in the 13 October 1917 Indianapolis Star, and snapshots in this album.

Large printed map of Europe with 4 attached pages of detailed annotations by Weiland. 

20 snapshot photos on 2 pages.  8 depict Weiland and his unit in France circa August 1944. 5 of the snapshots, all well-captioned, show bodies and aftermath at the liberated Gardelegen death camp on 29 April 1945 (images available upon request). With Allied forces approaching, the Nazis had evacuated prisoners from the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp. On the retreat, the undermanned SS guard recruited the local fire department and Hitler Youth, and burned them alive in a barn at Gardelegen on 13 April. When American forces arrived soon after, it became one of the first concentration camp stories to hit the newspapers on 18 April. The troops forced the townspeople to help give all of the victims individual burials, as seen in one of these photographs.

An irregular strip cut from a map of Europe is annotated with Weiland's route from Le Mans, France to near Berlin: "180 miles in 9 day's fighting. . . . Notice we went as close to Berlin as any American troops." 

Letter home to wife Agnes, 23 February 1945: "A lone regiment of infantry was across the river with no weapons to speak of to stop tanks when the Germans launched a counter-attack of large proportions. . . . The heavy artillery fire laid them low and saved the day."

"All For One Season's Greetings," mimeograph holiday sheet music from the 40th Field Artillery; "Safe Conduct" pass for German soldiers wishing to surrender; and a "G-2 Periodic Report" on counterintelligence gleaned from German civilians, 10 May 1945.

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