laststandonzombieisland

Or, “Pardon, I didn’t catch that…” for the rest of your life.

Official period caption: “American howitzers shell German forces retreating near Carentan, France. 11 July 1944.”

The above was taken among the attached artillery train of the U.S. 4th “Ivy” Division, either of the 29th, 42nd, or 44th Field Artillery Battalions, all of which fielded 105mm M1 howitzers at the time.

The Ivy Division first came ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day, and the above image was snapped as it was inching its way towards Paris, which it would help liberate in August. They went on to keep fighting across Northern France and into Germany, slugging through the Hürtgen Forest and clocking in during the Battle of the Bulge.

Recognized as a Liberator unit, they marched into the Dachau subcamp near Haunstetten in late April 1945 and were the most welcome thing anyone could set their eyes on.

Logging 299 days of combat, Ivy accumulated 22,660 casualties, 155 percent of the division’s authorized strength.

One of its members was 25-year-old budding author Jerome David “J. D.” Salinger, who finished the war as a staff sergeant in the MI section of the 4th’s 12th Infantry Regiment. Fluent in French and German, he interrogated captured Wehrmacht and SS officers, including those taken around Dachau.

Salinger later remarked postwar, “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live.”