CPL David Marshall, U.S. Army, WWII, Roer Valley, Battle of the Bulge

David Marshall was 16 years old and lying in a New York hospital room after suffering a sports injury when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Upon turning seventeen the following year, he was drafted into the Army, intially trained as a medic before assigned as an engineer in the infantry - specifically the 84th Infantry Division. The unit deployed to England in September 1944 and came ashore in France at Omaha Beach some five months after D-Day.

In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," David Marshall takes us inside his first combat around the town of Geilenkirchen near the border of Germany and the Netherlands. He shares the powerful of the close friend who forced him to make a promise just before the fighting started.

He then takes to the Battle of the Bulge as his unit was suddenly ordered to confront the German offensive in the Ardennes. He explains how brutally cold it was there and what it took to defeat the enemy advance.

Marshall then describes further action in the Roer Valley, crossing the Rhine, and the horrific discovery of a Nazi slave labor camp.