My next memory of Worms was pulling guard duty. As I mentioned before soldiers in a replacement depot are all kinds. Artillery, radio operators like me, infantry, Just all kinds. Heck I am in the artillery I don't know anything about a rifle. We just waited. So they didn't just select infantry who knew an M1 rifle they somehow picked me to pull guard duty. Guard duty consisted of patrolling a post on the periphery of the camp. Being in the army they naturally expected any soldier to know how to shoot so they handed me an M1 and told me your on guard. Well, guard duty wasn't particularly new to me but if I had not been curious about the M1 previously I wouldn't have known how to actually load it. Most rifles load magazines from the bottom but the M1 loads a clip from the top. When the last shot is fired the clip pops out and the chamber remains open. When you reload a clip you had better watch your thumb because when the bolt slams forward you can mess up your thumb. I don't know why they went with this style of loading a rifle. Machine guns that loaded from the bottom. Even the our Thompson sub machine gun did. The carbine M1 that was issued to the artillery loaded a clip from the bottom. Semi automatic hand guns loaded from a clip in the handle. S0 why they didn't make one that loaded from the bottom is a mystery to me. So the technology was there. But it was a powerful rifle in other respects. Didn't jam too easily I guess.
But in any case I did a manual of arms that I had seen the infantry do and I was set for guard duty. I got a laugh out of this.
An incident happened that has stayed with me all these years. Some German kids were playing around my post and one was particularly undernourished, He had spindly legs and gaunt features of the starving. He tried to keep up with the other kids but was handicapped by his physical condition and it was impossible. Starvation in Germany got worse under occupation for many months. Several books have been written about the deliberate policy to punish the Germans. I will get to this later when I describe life in Germany.
I have not been able to locate the picture of me and the some others at Worms who occupied a tent while waiting for assignment.
There were no pictures taken in Worms except this one. We could see the town completely destroyed. Everything was destroyed in Germany that could be destroyed from the air. Seemingly just to destroy. Even a lot of small towns. No other reason. To get a little insight get the movie and see Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Even in those days I think I had a historical perspective. Even in high school I picked what I thought would be easy courses. History being one of them. At the time I wasn't particularly mature in these subjects and didn't resent the senseless destruction of an ancient culture. I just figured that that was just the way things happen. I never considered the politics of countries and the world. We were the good guys the losers were the bad guys. So they deserved a little looting by the victors. Sort of like Iraq I guess. Some say the Germans had it coming. I don't think the country had it coming. Just to mass murder children, old people and women didn't bring the war to an end
any sooner. The same as for the British. It only hardened the resolved to fight on. I took a picture of a Greek statue in a destroyed museum in Munich later, I thought the statue quite interesting. The museum had been bombed and destroyed. This statue was in the basement or the level below ground level. So the statue was highlight by the sun down shining on it. So I just pointed my camera down at it and took its picture. I thought myself fortunate to have the right conditions there to take it's picture. Whether it is an original or replica I don't know. Hopefully someone will see it and tell me what it is if it is famous enough.
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