What We Fought For
A Journey Through Letters, Occupation, and the Forgotten Costs of Peace
Today is 6 May (as I begin to write this from behind a pink chai latte in a cafe in central Pilsen), 80 years to the day since the US Army entered what is now the Czech Republic and liberated Pilsen from Nazi rule. My grandfather, Kay, was not among the initial liberators, although all occupying American troops came to be known that way. On 6 May he was running traffic stops in Grafenwöhr, a small town on the other side of the German border. He made his way to Pilsen two days later, on what would be known as VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day in honor of Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allied forces. He would go on to spend the next three months, the rest of his deployment, here in Pilsen.
I came to Pilsen with the idea of meeting him here in a sense. It didn’t feel like a coincidence that I was given access to the letters he exchanged with my grandmother, Veazey, exactly 80 years after his troop was at its closest point to the Netherlands, where I live now, when I was the same age he was during that time. In the months since then, I’ve become so wrapped up in their story and it felt really important to commemorate his journey just by being somewhere he was at the same time he was. It became clear that my best bet would be the end of the war. Not only was he in Pilsen when Germany finally surrendered, but he was stationed here for the three months that followed, working to stabilize the local government and provide aide to the thousands of survivors drifting through.
In Pilsen, the liberation day is a big deal. I came early to experience the annual Liberation Festival, complete with several days of activities and performances and entire camps of re-enactments. They gave an amazing visual representation of how soldiers lived and what kind of equipment they used.
I feel like I’m at the finish line of a race, waiting for him to inevitably cross despite logically knowing that I’m about 80 years too late. At the same time, I feel like he’s with me anyway. There have been so many moments since arriving that I have been randomly overcome by goosebumps despite the heat of soon-to-be summer or have randomly found my eyes to be welling up despite no change in my emotions or composure.
The most overwhelming of these instances by far was at the commemorative parade. I went because I felt obligated after coming so far, but I’ve been to military parades before and didn’t particularly care for them. I’m not exceptionally patriotic and I really just expected to see a never ending procession of the jeeps and tanks the US Army had left behind 80 years ago.
As the first cars in the convoy made their way towards me, I realized they carried some of the few remaining liberators, along with their entire families. These men were pushing 100 years of age, but they looked so happy to be there. Their families looked so proud. Multiple generations were crowded into these jeeps, all eager to see and experience the city and the people their fathers and grandfathers had rescued all those years ago. The next string of cars represented the families of those who had already passed. Even without their veteran there to join them in the flesh, multiple generations piled into those jeeps, proudly holding posters displaying the name and likeness of their loved ones.
Two in particular stood out to me. One bore the same name as someone I knew; the other was empty save for a woman in full uniform holding the portrait of what had to be her father. I can’t be certain, but one look and you knew they had to be related. While all other families waved and interacted with the barricaded crowds, she stood as still as was possible on a moving vehicle, eyes forward, saluting. It was clear from her demeanor that for her, just being able to represent her father was an incredible honor. My eyes welled up again, but this time they overflowed. One thought kept coming to mind, over and over again:
This is what we fought for.
I was touched, but I more than anything I was grateful. I was grateful that these men grew older and lived long, full lives. I was grateful that they were surrounded by their loving families, that they got to see their families grow older too. I was grateful that the legacy of their harrowing experience in the European Theatre of Operations was passed to their family not as pain but as a source of pride. Their families did not celebrate that they endured something so traumatic but that they survived it. They looked evil in the face, not knowing if that would be the last thing they saw but willing to die if it meant stopping it. And they lived to tell the tale.
The rest of the parade was full of actors, Czech locals donning the old American uniforms, with some taking the role very seriously and others hanging off the guns of tanks and screaming “YEEEEEE HAW!” and I have to admit I found a lot of comfort in the latter. Their joy was infectious. It felt familiar, like I’d seen it before. One thing has been reiterated over and over throughout this trip: the Czechs were thrilled when the Americans arrived and pulled out every stop to make them feel welcomed. Even the unit archives mention that the medical detachment of Kay’s regiment didn’t set up their mobile hospital in a field as planned, but in the front room of a local home at the insistence of the owner.
That night, still reeling from the flood of emotion I felt watching the descendants of the city’s liberators roll by in dusty jeeps, I returned to my hotel and opened the letters Kay had written from this very place. To my surprise, there were many still unsorted that I had yet to read. I expected joy, or maybe even pride. I found it to some extent on 14 May 1945:
Some of these Czech people are still celebrating and we manage to have some fun occasionally. The beer here is particularly good and plentiful at the present.
The girls here are pretty and very cordial and according to all reports very chaste (no pun intended). Once in a while they have a parade and dress up in their national costumes which are extremely colorful and beautiful. I have seen so much and I am very much afraid that I shall remember only the nightmarish parts of this war and forget the decent side.
Before that, it seems a bit of panic set in before he could allow himself to celebrate. On 9 May 1945 he describes the mixed emotions:
It’s all over — over here now, and yet in front of us still is that fanatical and treacherous enemy — the Jap. At the present time it is very hard for me to express my feelings as they are to say the least quite mixed up.
Soaring to the heights and suddenly down very swiftly — not knowing just what to think. If I could only say to you I’ll be home in a short while, I would, but I don’t know, perhaps soon I will know. All these things are being worked on and it’s a tremendous job. My chances, that is on the point system are good, even so far as to be discharged from the service. However, with the war still on in the Pacific, and the call for officers, so they say it is hard to tell. But Veazey — I do believe that even if I do go to China, I’ll be home for a short stay regardless.
It’s clear he’s exhausted, and it’s hard to blame him. After eleven months of continuous combat, Kay is given his first opportunity to rest, but only for a moment before the realization that he might have to fight in another campaign sets in. After such a major milestone, the fight still wasn’t over. The Japanese had shown no signs of heading towards surrender at that point and all hands were on deck. Some men volunteered to go, and their duties around Pilsen began to focus less on peacekeeping and more on training for the fight to come.
As time went on, I found less joy in Kay and more signs of exhaustion, mixed with something else far more complicated.
Among the letters I had yet to read was the following, dated 25 July 1945.
The swift passing of time makes it unbelievable that this war has been over for so long and almost three months have passed since the Americans settled in Pilsen. It seems so odd to be at a standstill and yet again has come to be an accepted fact. From June 8 in Normandy to May 8 in Pilsen, this war was a continued movement. Only during the hellish winter did we stay in one place more than a week. We had just about completed six weeks in the same position — day in and day out, always the same — that was when I was closest to defeat — had lost two of my closest friends, nerves on edge, etc. We were right on the edge of the Nazi breakthrough. They hit us and hit hard but that was the one place they failed to penetrate. Some of the troops have a presidential citation for that. Where we were, we only had a little to worry about. And then suddenly the race was on again, and now here we are peacefully settled — that is on paper. Not much sense delving into the seething current of unrest that lies underneath. You know as well as I that the first and last cry forever is “When’re we going home.” It is a major task to try and keep some of these kids in line. After all the time spent in combat, the present regulations seem very petty and childish indeed. To be fined and courtmartialed for failure to salute or appearing without a hat doesn’t sit right. And it is a shame to have put a blot on the service records of these men. You have to go out of your way to help them or get them out of [a] jam because we all want to go home.
…
These Czechs have a little black market — liquor at $20 a quart or a cheaper brand made from gasoline, and that’s no lie. There have been several hundred deaths in the E.T.O. from poisoned booze. And invariably, after too much of that ‘buzzbomb juice’ a guy goes on a rampage — gets violent and destructive, and unfortunately we are acting as M.P.s [Military Police] so that makes for a distasteful job. Oh well — c’est la guerre.
One of the men in a related outfit, the 2nd Ranger Battalion, had caused a public scandal by “chasing a woman down the street and he didn’t have no clothes on and neither did she”, which I personally think is a nice way of saying a local Czech woman was raped and everyone knew about it. This was mentioned in an interview with a member of the 2nd Ranger Battalion (linked above), which was in the same grouping as Kay’s 102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron until 10 May. Kay alludes to this incident in a later letter as well, but what he doesn’t mention is that this cost the entire 2nd Ranger Battalion the ability to stay within the city in the new apartment buildings that had originally been built for the wives and children of German soldiers. After a year of camping, they’d been granted access to all the luxuries that come with living indoors for about two weeks before they were forced to return because of the actions of (I believe in naming and shaming) Granville Harrison.
I have to be honest: I’m impressed to see consequences at all during this time period, no matter how unfair it was to all of those who acted like normal human beings. Nevertheless, Kay’s latest promotion shortly after his arrival in Pilsen came with a new list of tasks that he had to complete in spite of the poor reputation, which could not have made it any easier.
Kay became the executive officer for his troop mid-June, an already thankless and demanding job that came with more complications than anticipated. He was the second-in-command and the troop commander’s primary assistant, managing internal operations so the commander could focus on larger mission objectives. His main duties included overseeing logistics and supply; he ensured vehicles, fuel, rations, and ammunition were properly requested, tracked, and distributed. He supervised administrative work such as rosters, morning reports, disciplinary records, and communication with higher headquarters. He coordinated guard details, patrol assignments, and security posts, and often acted as the liaison to other units or local authorities. He also managed billeting, camp layout, and sanitation, especially in bivouac or occupation settings, and ensured discipline was enforced and morale remained high. He was responsible for organizing the movements of the troops, ensuring readiness, and keeping operations running smoothly behind the scenes. In postwar settings like Czechoslovakia, his role expanded to include civilian interactions, coordination of ceremonial duties, and transition logistics as the unit prepared for redeployment or departure.
It is perhaps due to this that Kay really didn’t enjoy his time in Pilsen. Part of that feeling had to be due to the circumstances rather than the city itself, but after a couple days of hearing about how wonderful the relationship was between the soldiers and the locals, I was a bit surprised to find the following in another letter dated the next day, 26 July 1945.
The days seem endless and all alike coming upon us and suddenly dying — and now the nights are like that too. If I could find a suitable reason for the feelings I have perhaps I could better understand the pensive moods. I think that this resentment I have towards the Czech people has influenced me a bit and I am more than a bit surprised at this display of weakness on my part.
But I can’t understand for the life of me how a nation which had the respect of the so-called civilized countries for the way it governed itself can act the way it does. We are cast here in the role of the liberator. Not a glorified title by any means, but the increasing lack of co-operation on the Czech part is a mystery.
Granted of course that in her two great cities Prague and Pilsen are the nucleus of occupying forces of Russians and Americans — things in general lack the smoothness necessary. Yes the G.I.s are not overly happy, all want to get home, the many rules and regulations imposed by ranking army authorities seem petty and it seems clear to the average soldier that we bend over backward to appease the Czech. Yes there have been cases of robbery, rape, etc. but not a crimewave. The average soldier is overly generous and when we had supplies still rolling in the Czech always got a share, given gratis, but now that things have tightened a coolness has developed.
The Czech soldiers parade everyday singing etc. Claims are continually rolling in, many dated way back in May. They make trouble because we have German help (prisoners) and it is necessary to have that help yet the Czechs refuse to work for us. When the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, the people flocked to the Skoda plants and they continued working until VE Day, drawing higher wages than they had ever known. They cried about the Nazi oppression, yet when our planes bombed these military objectives in Czech the people resented it. A great deal of them were collaborationists — the govt wants to run all Germans out of Sudetenland yet refuses to grant Poland the right to a strip occupied by a Polish majority. Yes they certainly act funny now that it is all over. That is why sometimes I can’t understand what we fought for.
When I stood at the Liberation Parade that morning, tears streaming down my face, I kept hearing one phrase reverberate within me: “This is what we fought for.” It echoed in my bones, from every jeep, every saluting descendant, every proud face in the crowd. And yet, in the quiet of my hotel room later that night, I read Kay’s letter and found the line: “Sometimes I don’t understand what we fought for.” It hit like a stone in my chest. The contrast between the reverence I saw and the exhaustion he felt was staggering. But of course, Kay couldn’t have known then what history would make clear later: that the resentment he felt, the tension he couldn’t name, was shaped in large part by Soviet interference already tightening its grip on the region.
In February of 1945, the war in Europe was threatening to close. Germany had launched — and failed — its last great offensive attack at the Battle of the Bulge and Allied troops were freely marching through its Western border. Discussions were had amongst the Allied forces (primarily the United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR) at the Yalta Conference for the post-war allotment of European territory that was to be regained from Nazi control.
This step goes beyond large nations craving more territory; the governmental systems of Nazi-occupied countries had been dismantled and sent into exile several years prior. Without taking the time to help these countries rebuild both physically and beyond, the Allies would have left a power vacuum across most of Europe. It is within these leaderless vacuums and times of uncertainty that radical populism and extremist ideology gains a foothold. To maintain stability in Europe when the war finished, aiding the effected countries with re-establishing their governments had to be a priority.
Europe was divided on paper, with most of the West going to British and American control and most of the East going to the Soviets. Germany itself was divided in two, with Berlin being divided zone by zone. Austria and Czechoslovakia, however, remained undecided and undeclared. Their fates would have to be determined primarily by who got there first, coupled with domestic attitudes that often preferred one over another.
The idea was simple in nature, but far more complicated in reality. The US and UK sought to establish Western-style democracies such as their own, but the Soviet Union was pretty ideologically opposed to this and preferred to establish governmental systems modelled after the twisted version of communism Stalin had imposed in his own country.
I feel like it really needs to be stated that while we think of the Soviets as being communist, they weren’t really. Not in the true sense, fully based on the work of Karl Marx. In greatly oversimplified terms, communism is the belief that workers should own the means of production as opposed to a ruling class. Before the rise of Stalin, Lenin implemented what he claimed was the segway to a true communist paradise. Before they could reach that paradise, the system needed to be overthrown and the nation could be best guided through the chaos by a single proletariat with “everyone’s best interests at heart”. What that meant in practice was the violent suppression of anyone or anything that stood opposed to Lenin, whether there was evidence of opposition or otherwise. When Stalin entered the picture, he only tightened the reins. In the 1930s, Stalin enforced the Great Purge, a state-sanctioned genocide against anyone he deemed a threat. The true number of lives claimed is unknown, but estimated to be as many as 1.2 million.
The Soviets and the Nazis were initially allies themselves and, at the risk of sounding more biased than I already have, it made sense for them to get along. They certainly had a lot more in common with each other than with their Western foes, though their alignment was far more political than ideological.
Hitler ultimately broke this alliance less than two years later with one of the most militarily stupid decisions of his career: he invaded his ally, the Soviet Union. This was a failure and the German soldiers, unprepared for the brutality of Siberian winter, were forced to retreat. Stalin was blindsided not because he didn’t suspect a German invasion, but because he expected them to invade farther South and didn’t trust the warnings from British intelligence officials. He vowed revenge and joined the Allied forces out of necessity rather than ideological alignment (beyond, of course, wanting to eliminate the Nazi threat).
They attacked the Third Reich on two fronts with the intention of meeting in the middle. The first time the two armies saw each other was in April 1945, across the river from one another in Torgau. Both armies erupted in celebration at the confirmation of Germany finally being split in two. The Allies were closing in and the end of the war seemed imminent. In the final weeks, all that mattered was liberating the remaining cities with pockets of Nazi threat. Berlin was not an objective for Eisenhower because he knew half of it would be handed to the Russians. He didn’t want to risk all those lives for someone else’s cause, no matter how symbolic the victory would be. Austria had not been fully divided yet. He encouraged his generals to reach as far into it as they could, because whatever they liberated would be kept.
On the Western front, the seasoned German soldiers were surrendering by the hundreds, leaving only the fanatical Hitler Youth willing to fight. They were reckless and violent; brandishing the most advanced weapons available, they were fuelled by teenage hormones and the conviction that Germany would make a strong comeback. On the Eastern front, the German soldiers put up much more of a fight. Overall, they were more willing to die than surrender due to the Russian reputation for mistreating their prisoners.
It is this difference that allowed the Allied troops to advance a bit quicker, and soon found themselves at the Czech border with a dilemma. While it wasn’t yet formalized, all indications pointed to Czechoslovakia being claimed by the Russians, who had yet to arrive. The US Army moved forward because the end of the war was expected to be announced any day, and Pilsen was an easy target. The Nazis were easily surrendering for the most part, and the citizens of the city were eager to be free of them. However, the advance into Czechoslovakia ended at Pilsen at the request of Stalin himself, who planned to take and occupy Prague.
This led to to the creation of a demarcation line that separated the American zone in the most western sliver of Czechoslovakia and the Russian zone in the rest of the country. When the formerly exiled President Beneš visited Pilsen for the first time since his reinstatement in June of 1945, he was escorted from Prague to the demarcation line east of Pilsen by members of the Soviet army serving as his security detail. The Russians and Americans did not cross into the other’s occupied zones, so an American security detail comprised of members of Kay’s troop within 102d Cavalry met him at the border and escorted him the rest of the way to Pilsen.
At this point, the local attitude was the only thing that really could have changed the tide and allowed the US to fully take Czechoslovakia as opposed to the Russians. However, despite the sheer joy that the Czech people met the Americans with, the feeling dwindled as time went on. Among the reasons for this was the fact that the US Army was using German prisoners to assist with the clean-up and restoration in the city of Pilsen. Locals saw this as sympathising or even siding with their oppressors.
To make matters worse, many associated the idea of a ‘Western democracy’ with Nazi Germany. This may have been perpetuated by the communist party leaders within Czechoslovakia, as seen in a propaganda poster below. These leaders were strongly backed by the Russians, leading many politicians to act more like Russian puppets than local representatives. With this context, it is no wonder that Kay and his comrades struggled to work with the local government. They were working to establish a system that more and more local citizens were becoming ideologically opposed to every day.
With all of this in mind, I have a better idea of why my reality in Pilsen has been a lot more joyous than his ever was. The circumstances surrounding his visit, from an insane workload resisted by locals to an uncertain future deployment without a proper chance to recover from the one he was still on, were enough to make anyone bitter or leave them wondering what it was all for.
In one letter from the field he wrote of wanting to come back along his path with Veazey, with the desire to see it all again through her “unbiased eyes”. They didn’t get the opportunity to make that trip together. Despite the lack of his physical presence here with me, I can only hope that whatever he experienced through my eyes from wherever he is now brought him the peace he wanted.
I came here looking to meet my grandfather, the liberator. I think, in a way, I did. But I also met someone more complicated: a man tasked with keeping order in a crumbling world, worn thin by responsibility, and unable to reconcile the ideals he fought for with the reality that followed. It turns out, liberation isn’t always clean. Maybe that’s the hardest part: learning that history doesn’t end with surrender. That “victory” can still leave you tired, disappointed, or unsure what exactly was won. What I saw in the parade was the version of this story we hope for. What I found in the letters was the version we inherited. Somewhere between them, I found him.
We didn’t get the world he fought for, but we’re still living in the one he helped make. Maybe that’s what we really fight for: not a perfect ending, but the chance to carry the truth forward.
