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Previously, on World War II in HD.
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I motioned to everyone, ordering them to lay down a covering fire.
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In the pacific, first sergeant Jack Werner takes charge
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after his commanding officer is killed during the invasion of Leyte.
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I was only in command for an hour, but I feel I did reasonably well.
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At least I didn't get anybody killed.
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While in Europe. This is beyond what any man should be forced to endure.
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GI Rockie Blunt battles the elements during "the battle of the bulge".
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I tried to get out of the hole,
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and my legs were frozen into a block of ice almost to the knees.
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And army nurse June Wandrey loses hope that the end of the war is near.
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One thing is sure, I'm not going home for Christmas this year.
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What do you do when you run out of tears?
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Grant us a common faith that man shall know bread and peace,
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that he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security,
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an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best
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not only in our own lands but throughout the world.
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The national broadcasting company humbly asks admission to your homes
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in this, our hour of national sorrow.
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Crowds are lining constitution avenue from here to the White House.
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Many an American is standing with us today.
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All the soldiers and servicemen in the crowd stand firmly at attention.
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And now, the caisson will start its solemn sorrowful procession, through Washington.
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On April 14, 1945, America bids farewell to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
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the man who has led the country for the past 13 years.
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At a time like this, words are inadequate.
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The world knows it has lost a heroic champion of justice and freedom.
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In his infinite wisdom, Almighty God has seen fit to take from us a great man
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who loved and was beloved by all, humanity.
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For the past four years, President Roosevelt steadfastly guided America through the war.
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During his presidency, the Allies have succeeded in containing the infectious spread of Hitler's armies
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and are now, closing in on Berlin.
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In the pacific, American forces have pushed the Japanese out of the central pacific
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and are now within striking distance of Tokyo.
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But there is still fierce fighting ahead, and now it is up to the inexperienced Harry S. Truman
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Roosevelt's Vice President for only 82 days, to lead the country to final victory.
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Tragic fate has thrust upon us grave responsibility.
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We must carry on.
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Our departed leader never looked backward.
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He looked forward and moved forward.
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That is what he would want us to do.
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That is what America will do.
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There is a lot of fighting.
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Mainly thundering mortars.
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And it makes me feel on the edge.
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First sergeant Jack Werner is on Okinawa with army's 13th combat engineering battalion.
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After landing with the 2nd wave of assault force on April 1st,
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Werner and his platoon help secure one of the island's main airfields.
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Now the soldiers of the 10th army, along with two marine divisions,
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are pushing south, where the fighting has turned ferocious.
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For the past five weeks, US forces have struggled to advance toward the Sheri Line,
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the primary Japanese defensive line of resistance.
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Along its rocky highlands, thousands of well-armed Japanese troops,
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concealed in caves and bunkers, are unleashing artillery concentrations unlike anything yet experienced in the pacific war.
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We receive a communiqu? that a Jap counterattack is beginning at any moment.
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They're close.
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We can feel it.
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Artillery and mortars are exploding around us.
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One of my men goes down and then another.
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The situation is desperate.
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Werner and a dozen men in his platoon are wounded, all riddled with mortar fragments.
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I am dazed but I am conscious enough to realize the damage that has been done to my men and to me.
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Everyone is wounded, and two of my men are gone.
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The next thing I know, I am on a jeep.
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on a litter, and was taken back to a medic, to a medical tent.
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And that was a horrible sight, I must say.
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It was so full of wounded men, and blood all over.
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It was just awful.
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And I think when I got on the operating table
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I, that was the end of it. I didn't notice anything anymore.
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I was out.
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No one wants to be the last guy killed in a war, especially so close to the end.
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GI Rockie Blunt is with the 84th infantry division.
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After crossing the Rhine more than a month ago,
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Allied forces have begun the drive eastward across Nazi Germany.
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Their destination is the Elbe river, the last natural barrier before Berlin.
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Only days earlier, the Soviet Army encircled Berlin and began launching devastating attacks on the capital.
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Hitler's days are numbered.
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We used to advance as little as 10 miles in a day,
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but now, some days we're covering 60 miles.
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The mighty German war machine is crumbling.
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Our convoy stops abruptly outside a small town.
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We can't hear a firefight in the distance, and there's no traffic up ahead.
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Why are we stopping here in the middle of nowhere?
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Looking across a field, I realize I've seen places like this before in photographs.
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Only now, the faces behind the barbed wire fence are real.
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Now I know that the rumors we've been hearing are true.
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Now, I know why we are here.
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The nauseating smell of human carnage.
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If this isn't hell on earth, I don't know what else would be.
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GI Rockie Blunt has just entered a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp complex.
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Since ascending to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler
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has been systematically rounding up and exterminating Jews and minority groups
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he deems undesirable, such as homosexuals and the disabled.
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It was part of his master plan to create a true Aryan race.
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He called it "the final solution".
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It's difficult to differentiate between the living and the dead.
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Only the haunting eyes can tell me if a skeleton is alive.
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Concentration camps are in a category all by themselves.
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As far as atrocities, they were of such magnitude that it is beyond comprehension.
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It's more than the human mind can even conceive of.
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When you first come across it, you look, but you don't see.
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You listen, but you don't hear.
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You smell, but you don't know what you're smelling.
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We talked to them.
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In my very limited German, I say to them: "We're Americans. We will save you."
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But they don't say anything.
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They don't yell. They don't cheer.
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They just stand there silently.
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They're beyond making a noise.
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They're beyond having a voice.
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I meet a prisoner.
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I can hardly hear him when he talks.
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He tells me the German doctors at the camp conducted experiments on his throat
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and he no longer has a voice box.
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I ask him what nationality he is.
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" (German) " he says.
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"I am a German Jew."
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He takes me to Das Crematorium and insists I go inside.
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Skulls, bones, and ashes are everywhere.
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Fingernails which had been gouged out are still stuck in the walls.
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He tells me: " (German) " "Don't forget."
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I couldn't even if I wanted to.
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These tortured souls hardly resemble humans.
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It's so very, very sad.
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Assigned to Lieutenant General George Patton's third army,
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22-year-old Wisconsin native June Wandrey is at Allach,
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the largest sub-camp of Dachau.
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The camp was liberated weeks ago.
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But with more than 32,000 survivors in need of medical care,
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nurses like June are bused to Dachau from a nearby army camp.
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I'm on duty, caring for a hundred corpse-like patients, wrecks of humanity.
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Their bodies are riddled with disease:
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macerated skin drawn over their bones, eyes sunken in wide sockets, hair shaved off.
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Poles, Czechs, Russians, Slavs, Dutch, Hungarians, Germans.
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I understand so few words.
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But when I do something to make them more comfortable or give them a little food or a smile,
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their gratitude tears at my heart.
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When I hand out tiny pieces of chocolate,
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the poor souls are so excited and pleased.
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They just grab my hand and hold it.
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They wrap it in toilet paper and hide it under their sheets or mattresses.
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The poor souls still can't believe that they will get more later.
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You have to gently shake some of the patients to see if they're still alive.
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Their breathing is so shallow.
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Each time, I breathe a wee prayer for them.
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"God, are you there?
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God, where are you?"
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The destruction is part of our new life.
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As we head east, passing through towns leveled by our bombing campaigns,
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it looks as if all of Europe has been decimated.
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GI Rockie Blunt and the 84th infantry division are pressing east at a fast pace.
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American forces are closing in on the town of Torgau at the Elbe river,
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where they are to meet up with the Soviet Army, putting them one step closer to choking the Germans into submission.
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The National Broadcasting Company interrupts this program to bring you a special broadcast.
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President Truman has just announced that the Anglo-American
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and Russian Armies have met in the heart of Nazi Germany.
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East and west have met.
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This is the news for which the whole Allied world has been waiting.
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Nazi Germany, tottering to her final collapse, has been split clean in half.
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The forces of liberation have joined hands.
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The meeting of East and West is a triumph.
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But for some American soldiers, like Rockie Blunt,
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the joy of the moment is short-lived.
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General Dwight Eisenhower decides to halt his troops at the Elbe river
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and focus on pummeling the Germans to the southwest.
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This means that Berlin, Germany's capital city,
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will be left for the Russians to take.
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Everyone I talk to is in shock and disbelief.
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Berlin has been our main goal for these past few months,
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and now we won't be going there.
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So many of our men had died on the way there.
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It seems strange I won't be setting foot in the German capital.
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As the Soviet army advances through the streets of Berlin,
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Reich's chancellor Adolf Hitler marries his long-time mistress, Eva Braun.
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He waits until the Soviets are only blocks away
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and then shoots himself in the head.
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This is London calling.
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Here is a news flash.
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The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.
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Here's a special news bulletin.
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The British Broadcasting Company has just reported
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that Adolf Hitler died at the Reich chancellery in the heart of burning Berlin.
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With Hitler gone and the capital of the Third Reich now a smoldering ruin,
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the men and women of the Allied, including GI Rockie Blunt,
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know that the end of the war is upon them.
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I guess I'll be heading home soon.
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After everything I've been through, that will be a major accomplishment by any account.
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But there's still so many unanswered questions, so much I'm uncertain of.
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One thing I am certain of,
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I have to put the horrors of the past behind me
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and build a new life, a life of peace, not war.
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This is the BBC home service.
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We're interrupting programs to make the following announcement:
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It is understood that in accordance with arrangements between the three great powers,
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an official announcement will be broadcast by the Prime Minister at 3:00 tomorrow.
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In view of this fact, tomorrow, Tuesday, will be treated as "Victory in Europe" day.
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After nearly six long years, the war in Europe is finally over.
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May 8, 1945, is declared "Victory in Europe" day.
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Spontaneous celebrations erupt throughout the world.
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French soldiers pick me up, hoist me on their shoulders,
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and carry me down the Champs-Elysees, shouting: "Vive La France! Vive La America!"
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After four years of service in five countries,
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US army nurse June Wandrey is on furlough in Paris on VE day.
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We are in the heart of Paris.
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The crowd is nearly hysterical.
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Everyone is out on the streets,
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planes zooming overhead in huge formations.
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All the important brass are there: de Gaulle...
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And here I am.
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A very great crowd has collected already,
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thousands upon thousands of people gathered to share this historic day with the King and Queen.
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Listen to the crowd.
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The last communiqu?of World War II is in.
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The Russian people were told for the first time of Germany's unconditional surrender.
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Our rejoicing is sober and subdued by a supreme consciousness of the terrible price we have paid
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to rid the world of Hitler and his evil band.
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Let us not forget, my fellow Americans, our victory is but half-won.
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The West is free, but the East is still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese.
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When the last Japanese division has surrendered unconditionally, then only will our fighting job be done.
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I'm lying here, watching the show, so to speak,
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the kamikazes attacking our carriers and our carriers, our destroyers, and our ships.
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It's a very frightening situation.
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As Japanese Kamikazes continue to strike the American forces off Okinawa,
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Jack Werner is evacuated to a hospital ship.
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While fighting near the Sheri line, he was hit in the back and jaw by mortar fragments.
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It is may 8th, but the young Austrian Jewish immigrant has yet to hear the news of Germany's surrender.
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I'm incapacitated.
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I can't move.
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I can't get up from the litter.
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I can't do anything.
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If the Jap planes attack me, it will be over.
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Eventually the sailors arrive and they carry me toward the landing craft.
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And from the landing craft to the hospital ship hope.
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When we arrived at the boat, there was nothing but white-clad soldiers and white-clad nurses
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and white-clad doctors and white, beautiful white linen
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bunks into which they dumped me after tearing off my dirty bloodstained clothes.
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And this was the last I'd seen of Okinawa,
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because soon thereafter, I felt that we were moving, and we were leaving.
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While Werner is evacuated back to the States,
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the battle on Okinawa continues for more than a month.
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By the end of May, American forces capture Sheri Castle.
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Weeks later, they overcome the Japanese in a vicious week-long battle on Kunishi Ridge.
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Days later, Okinawa is declared secure.
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With over 12,000 US soldiers, sailors, and Marines killed or missing in action
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and another 36,000 wounded, Okinawa is the bloodiest campaign of the pacific war.
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And yet, the US military still has plans to invade the Japanese home islands.
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There can be no peace in the world until the military power of Japan is destroyed,
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with the same completeness as was the power of European dictators,
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Code-named "operation downfall", the first phase of the invasion of Japan is planned for November.
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Estimates are that downfall will take over one year and involve 5 million Allied troops
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with some casualty estimates as high as 1 million.
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After the staggering losses suffered on Okinawa,
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the White House fears that a war-weary American public may not be able to stomach the numbers.
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On July 26th, in the middle of a two-week conference in Germany,
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The Allies issue an ultimatum to the Japanese.
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Titled "the Potsdam Declaration", it calls for Japan's unconditional surrender.
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But the Japanese reject the declaration.
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The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
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We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war,
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in order to save the lives of thousands
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and thousands of young Americans.
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We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war.
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With Hiroshima in ruins, Truman warns the Japanese to surrender.
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He receives no response.
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Three days later, a second atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki.
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This footage of the blast was shot at 31,000 feet.
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The cities destroyed, but the Japanese are still unwilling to yield to the Allies.
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A third atomic strike is considered.
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The fate of the pacific war remains unresolved.
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From the mutual newsroom in New York,
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Tokyo radio says: "Acceptance of Potsdam Proclamation coming soon." One moment please.
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This is not official. This is from the Tokyo radio.
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Six days after America drops the second atomic bomb on Japan and one day after a bombing raid on Tokyo,
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The Japanese government notifies the Allies that it accepts the Potsdam Declaration
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on one condition: That the Imperial Emperor Hirohito retain sovereign status.
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Truman consents.
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President Harry Truman has announced the end of the war.
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The victory has been won. It's official from the White House.
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Japan surrenders. Japan surrenders.
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They will lay down their arms.
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There it is, the news you've been waiting for. It's over, all over.
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This is it! This is it, friends.
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The job has been done in the Western world and on the land and seas of the Orient,
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and let's not forget it.
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This is the NBC mobile unit in the heart and center and the pulsing focus of a giant nation,
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on Times Square in New York City.
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I look uptown over a foaming, seething, writhing mass of faces
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lifted joyously and brilliantly and gloriously happy at the final conclusion of a desperate war
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which has seen its closing days in the desperate day or three or four of anxiety, turmoil, anticipation, doubt, fear.
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Are these people happy? That's the only way to express it.
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Are you happy? Yeah!
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This is undoubtedly one of the most incredible days of my life.
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At long last, I am home.
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after recuperating from his wounds, Jack Werner is in New York City.
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He has been discharged from the army.
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Arriving at Pennsylvania station, I am mobbed by everyone and anyone who comes through.
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It is a wonderful feeling, after everything we have been through.
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And my reaction was very emotional, I must say,
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as it was a wonderful thing that happened.
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It turned out to be, you know, VJ day, and Times Square was exploding with people,
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and everybody was on the street kissing and hugging each other.
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It was very, very nice.
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Three weeks after VJ day,
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representatives of the Allied powers and Japan
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meet on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo bay
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to sign the formal instrument of surrender.
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Elements of this footage have not been seen before.
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Filmed by a sailor positioned in the ship's superstructure,
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General Macarthur and Admiral Nimitz walk toward history.
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My fellow countrymen, today the guns are silent.
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A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.
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The skies no longer rain death.
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Men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight.
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The entire world lies quietly at peace.
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Over the next few weeks and months,
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millions of Americans who served in the armed forces begin the journey home.
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Nurse June Wandrey arrives in Virginia almost two months after VJ day.
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Home at last, five months late.
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We disembark into a shabby, dirty area,
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no bands, no flags, no welcoming crowds.
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It's a sad ending.
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Our lives have been permanently altered.
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People who stayed home will never understand us.
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But then we hear a sweet chorus of "welcome home"
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from several gray ladies bearing trays of milk and cookies.
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And suddenly, the lump in my throat is too big to swallow.
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Tears spill down my face.
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I'm home.
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In the nearly four years that the United States fought in World War II,
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about 16 million Americans served in the armed forces.
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Over 415,000 never made it home.
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Most were killed in combat.
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Many remain missing in action.
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For those who survived, the echoes of the war experience linger for a lifetime.
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In my opinion, war is a terrible thing.
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I never thought in my life, in my young life, that I would see what I saw
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and have to go through what I went through.
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Every cross I see in a military cemetery represents a young life
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between 20 and 40 years of age. That's a waste.
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That shouldn't be.
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The people who create those situations are never the ones that are out there fighting.
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I detest that. I hate it.
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War is stupid, crazy.
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We've got to have love on our planet.
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There is a pride in being a veteran.
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I know that being a veteran sets me apart from millions of other people
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who did not sacrifice so much of their life and their mentality
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and their emotions for our country.
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Of that, I'm very proud.
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What is the greatest generation?
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The greatest generation was everybody who worked hard
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to provide the means by which we were able to win this war.
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The greatness encompassed the country as well, the whole country.
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It's all of us, not just the military.
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The spirit of man has awakened.
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The soul of man has gone forth.
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Grant us the wisdom and the vision to comprehend the greatness of man's spirit
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that suffers and endures so hugely for a goal beyond his own brief span.
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We are all of us children of earth.
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Grant us that simple knowledge.
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If our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed.
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If they hunger, we hunger.
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If their freedom is taken away, our freedom is not secure.
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Grant us a common faith that man shall know bread and peace,
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that he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security,
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an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best,
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not only in our own lands, but throughout the world.
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And in that faith, let us march,
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march toward the clean world our hands can make.
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Amen.34596
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