"...Lie on your back and put your steel helmet over your face..."

Bruce Donald Fenchel

Bruce Donald Fenchel, Ft. Knox, Kentucky War: World War II, 1939-1946 Branch: Army Unit: 8th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division, 3rd Army Service Location: Fort Knox, Kentucky; Camp Bowie, Texas; Chippenham, England; European Theater Rank: Private First Class Place of Birth: Strawberry Point, IA

Beginning at age eighteen, Bruce Fenchel fought all five of the major battles of Europe under the command of General Patton. Blasted in a tank explosion at Chaumont, he hung onto a gas truck with frozen hands long enough to be dropped at a Belgian family home and pub, where he was hidden in the attic. After fierce battles at Bastogne and the Rhine River, he witnessed terrifying sites of torture apparatus and death when his division liberated the Ohrdurf Concentration Camp.