May 8, 1945

I am reminded of my father, Glen “Spike” Rutherford, who entered the U. S. Army shortly after his 26th birthday early in 1942, went to North Africa in 1943, Italy in 1944, and Germany in 1945. When the war ended, he went to Le Havre and boarded a troop transport home.

This week is the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. I have been watching some of the excellent documentaries about the end of the war on The History Channel and PBS.

“The Day the War Ended” by Martin Gilbert is a very good book about the end of the war. The story is told from the perspective of people who witnessed the end in the various countries involved in the conflict. The general emotion by those who survived the cruelest and most inhumane parts of the war seems to have been near disbelief that it was finally over and they were still alive. A statistic in the second paragraph of the book says that, on average, 20,000 people were killed each day of the war.