I think the first post here should go to the veteran of my family who inspired me to gain knowledge on WWII.
His name was Gilbert DeVries, born in Indiana in 1913, he grew up near the Kankakee River and went hunting there regularly.
He served in the US Army from 1941-1946(?) as an artilleryman for the 603rd Tank Destroyer Battalion. We (my family and I) do not know a lot about his war service since most of his war items were permanently destroyed by Gilbert's mentally ill son. Recently, my great aunt discovered some of his old war stuff in a wooden box in her attic, some of the items in there gave me a general idea of the unit he served in. Included was a Camp Hood tank destroyer patch, and his 603rd TDB patch. He also had two Marksmanship medals, one Expert Sharpshooter in the Carbine, and another regular Sharpshooter medal. The latter, however, was missing the clasp that would tell us what weapon he was a marksman in.
He also had the rank patch of a Luftwaffe Lieutenant Colonel too, something that surprised me, because I do not know how he got it, nor does my grandpa.
We also have some pictures too.
This one is a picture of Gilbert and his brother fishing together in Belgium. Gilbert is the one on the left.
This one was of him probably from sometime during the war, after he had finished training maybe.
The 603rd TDB's war service also matches the stories of Gilbert from the war. Gilbert said he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and liberated Buchenwald (which my grandpa remembered, falsely, as Bergen-Belsen), he also had some pretty gnarly stories of war that I could share here if prompted, this thread is about your guy's stories mainly.
Gilbert also had some pictures taken from when he liberated Buchenwald, these were of the hundreds of dead bodies stacked on top of each other. Those, unfortunately, were destroyed by Gil's son.
Gilbert said that they forced the remaining German soldiers who were at the camp to dig graves for the corpses lying around the camp. And every once in a while they would hear the sound of a machine gun firing and a CO yelling,
"Don't shoot the Germans!" That is some pretty grisly stuff.
I have to thank Gilbert for inspiring me to learn about WWII and gain all the knowledge I have on the subject.