Alpena County History

Christmas At St. Vith 1944 Told To Lorraine C. Mains

By Donald A. Cochrane

The following serialized story was sent to Myra Herron by the Cochranes, for inclusion in the Herron Flights newsletter. Donald A Cochrane was the son of Estella Herron and Henry Cochrane. He was born December 12, 1919, and after WWII, told this story to Lorene/Lorraine Cochrane Mains. At that time, Lorraine was the family historian, and for that, we thank her every day!

On December 20^th, 1964, I watched on television, scenes from the Battle of the Bulge and heard terse, crisp script describing it. It was the 20^th anniversary of that ill fated segment of World War II. As I listened and remembered, I experienced again the weariness and horror of the small part that was mine. Out of the past I suddenly saw again road signs recording 5 kilometers to St. Vith. I saw a sign pointing to Bastogne and to Malmedy. I had walked through Malmedy and St. Vith and had slept in cellars and barns and fox holes there. I lived again through the events that I had hoped to forget.

To begin, I left home on Easter Sunday, April 1944 and by Christmas I was no longer of any assistance to Uncle Sam. Home was Alpena, Michigan where I was married and the father of two children, one a year and a half and the other three months when I was drafted.

I was sent to Camp Fannin, Texas, near Tyler, the city of roses, for 16 weeks basic training. I had had some experience rabbit hunting which may have helped me in rifle practice where I was awarded a certificate of sorts. I was pretty strong and tough, I thought, when I went in, but I soon got tougher.

At the end of basic I got a 10 day furlough with orders to report in New York on September 25. In no time, it seemed, I was on my way. I stopped in Detroit overnight with my sister and family and they saw me off, to I knew not what. Many times I wondered if I’d ever see a familiar face again.

I arrived at a large camp, probably northwest of New York City. In a week I was on a troop carrier, the Queen Mary, with 10,000 other soldiers. We were assigned 15 to a stateroom for two, so it was like sleeping on trays. Each net was about six inched from the sleeper above and below. The Queen took off running, unescorted. We went south, skirted the coast of Florida and headed east. We thought we were experiencing hardship as we were fed just twice a day. We should have known it was luxury compared to what was ahead.

We must have gone up through the Irish Sea. At least, we missed the German submarines and when we anchored in a Firth outside Glasgow, scuttlebutt said that a submarine net was lowered to keep out murderous intruders.

We were loaded on a trooper and went down through London. Another troop train took us to Southampton. We had a few nights in English barracks, heated by coke from which Americans didn’t know how to get any warmth. For barracks they used a 1” by 2” lumber for framing made into trusses. They were sheeted with a ¼ inch asbestos board similar to Johns Manville board. I suppose lumber was scarcer than in the States.

As fast as we could get on troop ships we were taken across the Channel and landed on Omaha Beach. We kept on the move. Another troop train took us outside of Paris. This was almost our only contact with the French but their sidewalk water closets shocked our Puritanical minds. Or maybe intrigued is a better word. In a few days we were loaded again. We went up through Paris, through Mons and Brussels and on to Aachen.

The command there had taken over a castle and when I looked up a hill and saw that castle I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was just like a picture in my school books which I had never really believed. We arrived about December 10^th and on the 12^th I remembered it was my 25^th birthday.

The old palace was headquarters for the 30^th Infantry Division. It was a replacement depot and we were the replacements and went into the outfit. As soon as we were assigned it was evident that we were needed elsewhere so the whole division moved south. At eleven o’clock at night we were loaded on trucks. We rode all night and four hours the next day. We went through the hedgerow area where the Battle of the Hedgerows had taken place previously. We stopped and snatched a little sleep, two to a fox hole. It was hard digging and the depth depended on how ambitious or how scared you were. Mine was six inched deep among those hedgerow roots.

The Battle of the Bulge started December 16 coinciding rather closely with our arrival and went on until the middle of January. History books tell it thusly: The Allies planned to cross the Rhine to get to the Germans but before they could make the attempt the Germans threw in 38 Divisions on a 50 mile front in a surprise attack called aptly, Operation Grief. Their strategy was to split the Allied Army and capture Antwerp. They drove the Americans and British back almost to the Meuse River and surrounded Bastogne. The 3^rd Army pierced the assault from the south. By early January the Allies had recovered all the previously held territory. It was known as the Battle of the Bulge because of the shape of the arc in which the Germans penetrated the Allied territory.

We had arrived at the Bulge where the Germans were pushing through. It was a heavily forested area and difficult to defend. Headquarters for our outfit were any place just out of range, a cellar, a shop or any available, fairly protected spot. We came through Malmedy, a cross roads with a few houses and on to St. Vith. From there we bailed off and started hoofing. A whole company of 100 would take off by squads. A squad is supposed to be 12 men but we were down to four or five. We walked about four or five miles from St. Vith.

We established a line of holes about 100 yards apart two or three miles ahead of our base. Our fox holes were big enough for three, two or more feet deep, big enough to lie down in and peer over the edge. We had army rations with us and warm clothes, overshoes and coats. The snow was six to eight inches deep and the trees though bare were fairly dense.

On one of the first nights guarding, a German half track was blown up by mines three or four blocks from us. One of the men was blown into a tree and in the clear, crisp cold night we could hear him moaning all night long. In the morning the Germans came for their wounded in an American jeep. Our men knocked out with a bazooka.

Aside from this, life in the fox hole was pretty quiet. We had a day’s supply of D rations in our pocket – chocolate bar and biscuits. The K ration had a biscuit in a long heavily waxed carton and three or four ounces of a spam like meat, powdered coffee, 3 pieces of candy, a small dried fruit bar and 4 cigarettes. The carton would last long enough to boil a cup of water for coffee. If we were sitting in one place for a time we got the C ration. It contained a normal sized bean can with beans and franks or meat balls, biscuit, sugar, coffee, fruit bar and 4 cigarettes. We were a couple of miles from food supply but every day we got a fresh issue. They hauled water to us in “Jerry cans” strapped on jeeps. WE couldn’t smoke at night or show lights if we valued our lives. We took turns dozing and guarding.

I got out a letter from my wife and reread it. The folks at home were getting ready for Christmas. The baby was almost a year old. It was several days since I had written. If a fellow had paper he could usually scratch off a note back at the lines. I would write the first chance I got on relief.

My buddy and I were in our hole and three in the hole next to us. Two of the fellows were old hands. They knew something was afoot and had itchy feet. They sneaked back and forth goofing off, first for boots, then for rations, then mail or anything else that came to mind. They were ready to move fast, I remembered as I thought of it later. I had been told to stay so I stayed in the hole alone, hoping they’d come back.

The place was as still as death when suddenly I looked up into the face of a German and the barrel of an automatic rifle. We both fired. My gun was semi-automatic. He missed except for three holes in my sleeve but I didn’t miss. He was out in front of a patrol of 10 or 12 who immediately sprang from the trees and surrounded me and motioned me out of the hole. They were over me for grenades and ammunition and took my gun.

The day before I had read in The Stars and Stripes an account of “Slaughter at Malmedy”. One hundred twenty-five of our men were surrounded and captured and machine gunned. Fifteen had lived and escaped when they feigned death as the Germans finished off any moving wounded with pistols.

I thought my time had come. I was numbed with fear. I do not remember the symptoms of dry mouth, gasp for air, pounding in the ribs, wet macaroni like legs and that awful pit of the stomach feeling. But name it and it happened to me many times.

For some reason they decided not to finish me off but motioned me to pick up their dead sergeant. We had gone about 500 yards when a mortar barrage sprayed us and peeled the paint off my hard hat and hit my burden. I carried him for three quarters of a mile until I couldn’t carry any longer. Then one of my captors got out a shelter half, like a poncho. We used it as a sled and dragged him another three quarters of a mile and left the body by the side of a road.

We were joined by other patrols with other prisoners. Soon there were a dozen of us. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, so couldn’t guess our fate.

Much of what happened in the next months is a blank in my mind but I will never forget the first night. The 12 of us with a guard huddled in a root cellar while our lines plastered us. Shells landed 50 feet from our cellar and dug holes big enough to bury us. We hit the dirt most of the night as the pounding continued and we thought each one was the last for us. It was evidently not my time to go.

By January 2^nd my wife had received a telegram from the War Department informing her that Private Donald A. Cochrane was missing in action December 22^nd. It was three months before she got a postcard from a ham radio operator in Massachusetts saying I was alive about the middle of January 1945 according to records captured by the Americans and radioed out via Red Cross. It was six months later before I was to set foot on American soil.

Each day we kept moving to the rear. Most of our traveling was done at night or late in the afternoon. It must have been Christmas Eve when we came upon an outfit moving artillery forward. It looked like antiquated gear compared to the American materiel. The artillery was built on old wooden frames with high wheeled wagons hauled by horse. They were stuck in the mud. One of the officers of the artillery outfit ordered our guard to call a halt and give a push. He then invited two or three of us into a house, while the others were pushing. He may have offered us a sip of wine. I distinctly remember someone passing us each a small Christmas cookie. He wished us Christmas cheer and got in a few licks about the fact that we must realize the Americans had lost the war and that the Germans would soon be rolling from New York to San Francisco. We ate our cookie in silence.

We met up with other groups of prisoners. Eventually, there were about 100 of us with one guard for 10 or 15 men. We walked across the Ardennes sector which the 106^th Division had held and where they were annihilated. There was plenty of evidence, frozen corpses and smashed equipment. I thought about the Malmedy slaughter and wondered what was in store for us.

It must have been Christmas Day when a guard took a fancy to my overshoes. I peeled them off. That called attention to my shoes. All of the fellows except me wore issue boots with rough leather on the outside. My feet are size 11 and hard to fit so I had polished shoes with smooth leather. The guard ordered me to change shoes with him. He was a little guy with approximately size 6 feet. I struggled along getting more crippled and blistered. Finally, I found a guard with a knife, showed him my feet and he let me cut the toes out of those shoes while holding a gun on me. Then walking through the snow was almost like walking in my socks.

The rest of my clothing was quite adequate when I left the fox hole. I was wearing long johns, woolen shirt, sweater, field jacket, two pairs of trousers, gloves, scarf, knit cap and hard hat. I had an extra pair of sox in my pocket and a pair up under the straps of my hard hat. One day an officer decided the hard hat was in the same classification as side arms and knocked it off and I lost my secreted sox. Six months later I was wearing most of the same attire much the worse for wear.

I had a week’s beard when captured and in two or three more weeks had quite a growth. As we walked through the frosty night air my beard frosted and stiffened. I thought perhaps I looked like a porcupine. It was most uncomfortable but of all my worries only a minor one.

One day as we walked we saw an American flyer shot down. The plane, a P-51, disintegrated but by luck, the pilot managed to bail out. We sat down in the snow and waited until two of the guards rounded up one more prisoner.

About once a day we would meet up with a mobile kitchen and would get black bread, a taste of sausage and three or four small boiled potatoes. To the best of our knowledge the guards ate the same food and no more than we did unless they got a handout when we stopped at command posts.

One afternoon about January 6^th or 8^th we were being marched through a forest. It was a clear sparkling day and the roads had been snowplowed. A flight of American bombers, B-17s, came over. One must have gotten a direct hit in the bomb load. It disintegrated and for an hour bits fluttered down like handsful of artificial snow glittering in the sunlight. The crew didn’t have a chance.

P-51 MUSTANG FIGHTER

A few miles back of the German line we came to their Headquarters S. S. Outfit. There we found Germans who could speak English better than most of us could. They quizzed us trying to get information - -Who are the company officers? What is the strength of the company? Are you married? Children? How far has the draft reached down for recruits?

In their questioning they actually told me more about my outfit than I knew. They told me what happened to the 30^th Division in the Hedgerow area. I was a newcomer and knew nothing.

If a fellow’s name sounded as if he were of German descent or if his mother’s maiden name was German he was berated for betraying the Fatherland. It was shocking to find how much more they knew of our strategy than the average dogface knew.

We had been on the march for a couple of weeks. There were about 125 of us. I had about come to the conclusion that maybe I’d survive. Then we commenced to run into Hitler youths, 12 to 17 years old, as guards. They were trigger happy. It was touch and go and I expected a bullet in the back any moment.

The next span of time is very hazy to me. I do not know if fatigue, fear, hunger or hopelessness caused it but my mind is blank. A nothingness took hold of me.

Eventually, however, we walked 100 miles, 200 miles, or 200 kilometers to the first prison camp, Stalig 4B. We took showers, shaved and were deloused. They had an artificial soap that didn’t make suds but we squirreled it and toilet paper away in our clothes any time we could get it. I was issued English hobnail boots to replace my open toe job. We were questioned again - -What had we done in civilian life? We gave two pat answers. We had been students or farmers.

We were allowed to write two postcards home. The second month we were allowed one postcard. After that nothing. None of them reached their destination until long after I had arrived home.

A startling thing happened at this camp, however. Doctors gave us shots over the rib cage - -germ warfare, we wondered. Finally, someone got the message. They were typhus shots.

There were probably 2000 to 3000 Americans in this camp, a makeshift place. The bakery mobile units were housed in a shed. We were on work details. A group would load grain on trucks and take it to the mill and reload the flour and bring it back. It was a mixture of speltz, millet, rye and wheat. The bread was hard and heavy. On bakery detail we tossed the loaves onto a pile of straw and when cool loaded them into a truck. If a loaf fell and broke we hid it or ate it on the spot. The crust was good but the heavy, doughy interior while hot could send a man into violent cramps, we soon learned.

We were in this camp two to three weeks. Many German citizens were still in the villages and on the farms but we noticed that the men were all old. The women were middle aged or older and the children were all young. The population in between was away working or fighting we supposed.

It was probably from this camp that the Red Cross broadcast our names and serial numbers when the Americans took over several months before the war ended. How a ham radio operator in Massachusetts received it I’ll never know.

About the end of January we were loaded on a troop train and moved to Stalig 12 near the village of Muhleberg [Muehlenberge] on the Elbe River about 85 kilometers or 50 miles south of Berlin. We were on a direct bombing route to Berlin and every night the bombers flew over. I expect they knew it was a prisoner’s camp as we were never touched. We took no chances and observed the blackout. However, one day while watching a dog fight between an American P51 and a German Messerschmidt 109, the American fired on the German and he maneuvered so low over our heads that he cut a wire 10 or 12 feet above us. By that time we were

Face down in the dirt and he had pulled out. A mile or so away we heard the German crash and the American dipped in salute to us as he came back and winged off.

Our camp was about a half mile square, probably 300 to 400 acres. There were 35 or 40 barracks with triple decker bunks, each barracks housing 300 to 500 men. It was a British Air Force prison and there were thousands of British, some of whom had been there for two or more years. There were also Russians and many Americans and some French. Around the edge of the encampment there were guard towers and machine guns.

The area was largely evergreen forested and incendiary bombs had killed off large tracts of trees whose stubs were still standing. Men would go out from each barrack in details of 10 or 12 every second day and carry back what they could on their backs for fuel for our brick stoves.

I was at Stalig 12 about four months. We slept two to a narrow bunk with one blanket. We were fed once a day from mobile kitchens. We had a daily ration of 200 to 400 grams of black bread. A loaf would be cut in 5 to 7 portions. Sometimes we had a small piece of margarine. We had a serving of grass soup or dehydrated vegetable soup. It was mighty slim pickings.

Occasionally there would be a Red Cross package of 20 pounds to divide. I had 3 or 4 while I was there and got on seventh of each. Theoretically, a Red Cross package was supposed to last one man for a week. There would be a pound can of butter, chocolate, canned meats, salt, cigarettes, dried fruits and Klim, a dried milk product. We craved salt and couldn’t keep away from it when it came. The Red Cross could come up, occasionally, from Switzerland unless it got too rough and the roads were bombed out.

The English were amazing. How they managed to keep alive two or more years baffled us. Each person had his own dishes made up from tin cans. The English could dismantle a Klim can and make square pans or any kind of utensil. They ate their ration in the evening when there was a fire to warm their soup. We thought maybe they could get along on less food than we could or they jolly well were tougher or “school tie” or something. I lost 60 pounds and went from 190 to 130 pounds. One of our main subjects of conversation was food. We exchanged recipes and I wrote them in tiny script on tiny scraps of paper.

We were shocked one day when a wood detail was worked over by one of our P 38’s. They hit the dirt by a fence. A few were injured but no one was killed.

One day an ammunition train just outside our camp was zeroed in by a P 51, although the train was partially hidden by trees. It exploded with staccato booms for an hour, almost car by car, too close for comfort. It was precision work. It looked as if the belly of the plane was three feet off the ground at times. He got the locomotive first. He’d come down over the train and machine gun a car at a time and zoom up and circle back.

During the 3 ½ to 4 months I was at Stalig 12 a half dozen of us were together on work details. When we weren’t working we sat on the edge of our bunks and talked and exchanged recipes. The English would get out and walk around and around the compound. There were always deep, dark rumors of escape efforts. Without doubt, there was a tunnel crew but I was too new to get in on anything. Some said the walkers had bags of sand inside their trousers which was scattered minutely as they walked, walked, walked.

We had a barracks leader, usually the Senior British Officer. Each evening before the air raid warning and lights out he would get up and read the news of the day as released by the Germans. It was always unfavorable to us. The closing communiqué we were certain would always be, “Ten, 20 or some number of bombers shot down today, mostly four engine.” Besides this news, there was always more or less cheering items from BBC over short wave radios, secreted where, we never knew. At least, we believed the latter news. We heard of the desperate fighting at Numegen and toward the end Magdeburg was frequently in the news. If thoughts and hope could have helped we did our share.

I developed a feeling of healthy respect for the British, even got to enjoy their accent. They were past masters at scrounging or squirreling away stores. They were inventive and ingenious in a very tight spot.

The Russians were most hated by our guards. They got the dirty job of cleaning latrines. Each day the tanks would go out and be dumped on potato ground. Camp scuttlebutt credited them with bringing into camp radio equipment and even bread in their empty tank trucks.

DONALD COCHRANE IN

HIS ARMY UNIFORM,

OUR OWN HERO FROM THE WAR!

Our radio news sounded as if the end might be in sight. Suddenly about the 2^nd or 3^rd of May the Germans evaporated from our prison camp. They left in the night; in the morning no guards, no guns. The day before we had seen streams of people, old men, women and children walking past, hauling or pushing carts or little four wheeled goat wagons piled high with their belongings. They were fleeing from the Russians who had opened up the area.

Along in the forenoon the Russian soldiers arrived riding anything they could move on. It reminded me of the old style cavalry. They were on horses, on tractors, on wagons hauled by a tractor or horses or a horse and a cow. They were a rag tag bunch. Some were loaded down with automatic rifles and burp guns. Some wore guns cases crossed on their backs. They took over our camp. In a short time an American lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers arrived in a jeep. They wee a reassuring sight. We were told the Russians were to get trucks in to take us out. They tried negotiations with no success. Our men said they couldn’t advise us but the road numbers were thus and so and that the area was under Russian jurisdiction. The British started moving. The Russian prisoners started for home. The Americans left.

Five of us took off. One guy from Ohio had been my bunk mate. One was from Pennsylvania; another was our contact man. He had studied German in High School. There was another besides me. Things were getting rather hazy for me the first week of hiking. I had started to have chest pains and hurt when I breathed and was out of my head part of the time. We hitchhiked, rode in wagons and kept moving.

We stopped at German homes and they shared their food with us. In villages we hunted up the burgomaster and got ration tickets. We got a ration from the bakery, the meat market, the dairy. We would get black bread, a small portion of sausage, and usually buttermilk. The homes had ersatz coffee and sometimes skim milk to augment our ration.

We were a few days out of the prison camp when F. E. Day became official on May 8^th. We traveled through mountainous area with chalet type homes, heavily beamed. This, too, was like the pictures I had seen and scarcely believed.

The Berman women never refused us a place to stay for the night. It was the first time I had seen sheets for months. Sometimes we flopped on their beds without even taking off our shoes. The women were deathly afraid of the Russians. Once we stopped at a house just as a wagon load of Russians came up. Suddenly from out an upstairs window a young girl jumped, shattering every pane. She ran like a deer for the fields. We waved the Russians off, letting them know that we were there first. When she crept back we found she was a displaced French girl, the only young woman we ever saw. She was grateful to us for saving her from the Russians.

The grandmother in charge there was a buxom woman. She shared their food. Principally, I remember her hugging a long loaf of hard black bread under her left arm. With her right hand she took up a razor sharp knife and with one motion sliced off a chunk. I shuddered in admiration that she missed a slice of her own ponderous flesh.

We kept going, using any shelter we came upon. We hit a main road and stayed at a place that might have been a military academy. That’s where I got loaded with graybacks. (Folks, I looked that up for us all: they are body lice.)

In three or four days we reached an autobahn. By then, I was out of my head with high fever most of the time and dependent on my friends. We met Germans coming home, singly, or in groups walking as we were. We ran into Russians, wiping up the spoils as they swept along.

By the time we had hitchhiked and walked 75 or 100 miles we reached a fairly good sized town, perhaps Halle, and we crossed a river, maybe the Weser. We evidently skirted Leipzig. As soon as we got across the river we met up with American army trucks. We had made it! I kept thinking, “Relax. Everything will be all right.”

We told our story and were taken to a collection point, a school I think. Many of the rooms had been cleared and were filled with cots with 6 to 8 sick soldiers. Someone told us to clear a room. I think all the broke plaster and glass had been shoveled into the room assigned to use but we shoveled and cleaned a space for our cots. I didn’t see the room finished. I went on sick call and was immediately shipped over to a big hospital in the city. I fought this because I didn’t want to get separated from my friends. I never saw them again.

The hospital had a woman nurse in charge and a group of medics. I got into a room, got a pan or water and stripped to take a bath. The nurse came in and bawled me out until she saw the filth on me. Then I guess she thought I needed a little cleaning. We had cots and woolen blankets there – no sheets - but it was clean. They spent two or three days or three or four days checking me. I had pneumonia. Time meant nothing. The first night I heard a fellow call for a nurse. He said someone was in trouble. I must have been the one in trouble because they came in and threw some pills into me. I was there a week or so. The trays of food which I had been craving barely interested me.

When I became an ambulatory patient I was moved to a tent hospital in the middle of an airfield. There were a few doctors and medics and probably 130 to 220 patients. We were on our own. They said, “Here’s the dispensary, here’s the mess hall and here is your cot.”

A sign in the mess hall said, “Take all you want; eat all you take.” Meat was served on the plate but everything else was on the table. There were cookies, French bread, butter, vegetables and marmalades and jams in gallon tins. I hadn’t had a taste of sweets for five months. I ate until I couldn’t eat another bite.

I wrote a card home saying I had been released. They received the first word from me in six months about June 1^st; nothing more until I arrived home June 25^th.

At the tent hospital we were waiting for an ambulance plane to take us to an American army hospital in Paris. Finally, the plane came and 28 or 30 or us were assigned to it. There was an air corps medic or medical officer in charge. We got into bucket seats, actually, just a depression in the floor.

We had just nicely gotten up to 2500 feet when the medic asked if there was anyone with a lung ailment. I confessed to pneumonia so we flew low just over the cloud cover. It was my first flight except for a $5 jaunt over the airfield at home. We had startlingly beautiful glimpses of the country probably over Frankfort, the Rhineland, the Saar and maybe over the Ardennes and over France to Orley Field, Paris.

The Army Hospital in Paris was a modern up-to-date place. It seemed more like home with American nurses and doctors. In 10 days with good care and excellent food I was recovered and ready to go home. There was an expectant cheerful air around the hospital. The war was over. Let’s get going. I was not really a bed patient. In Paris at Camp Lucky Strike I could have seen the sights but I didn’t have any money.

Several thousand of us were loaded on a Kaiser built Liberty Ship at Le Havre and in the matter of six days we entered Boston Harbor and were taken to Camp Miles Standish. We had been given partial pay at the staging area, partial pay on the boat and partial pay at Camp Miles Standish. We were loaded on a trooper and in 20 hours we were in Chicago. There were so many of us arriving they got rid of us quick with partial pay again and traveling expenses home.

Home never looked so good to me, a little strange at first but I really lived again during my 60 days furlough. In about five weeks I had gone from 130 pounds to 220 pounds. I couldn’t walk up 4 or 5 steps without panting; I was that soft and flabby. I had been in the army 15 months; 9 since my furlough before going overseas. It took the children a little while to get used to me. Their mother had talked about my picture but they didn’t remember me. The older boy was three and the baby a year and a half.

Around the first of September I had to report to Hot Springs, Arkansas where the Army had taken over the plush hotels. My health was thoroughly checked. In a couple of weeks I was sent to Camp Robinson, Arkansas. A point system of release had been put into practice. My prison camp record chalked up quite a few points. My number came up and I was through soldiering.

I had actually served my country a week or 10 days in the Battle of the Bulge but the war was over. I had spent my worst Christmas and some hopeless days and lived through it. Twenty years have passed and man continues to suffer and die in the world’s hot spots for man’s inhumanity to man.

Many thanks to the Cochrane family for sharing this wonderful story with us. After so many years have passed, we understand how horrible this war actually was, and know the results of it all. Hopefully, we’ve remembered and learned from it.