Donald R. Burgett and the rest of the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne had fought long and hard since the Normandy invasion. They fought through seventy-two days of continuous combat in Holland, and thirty days of frozen hell in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. War weary, tired, and bloodied, Burgett and other Screaming Eagles of A Company were heading for the last battle, the drive that would carry them through Alsace, Germany's Ruhr Valley, the Rhineland, Austria, and the end of the war in Europe. The last push across Germany did not hold the full-scale fanatic resistance the U.S. command had expected, but rather, small pockets of die-hard Nazis unwilling to admit that they had lost. It became clear why some did not wish to surrender. Burgett and the other American soldiers discovered forced labor camps of half-starved Poles, Russians, Czechs, and Jews; men, women, and children all forced to labor for the cause of Germany, or die. Burgett and his men liberated four Nazi concentration camps where inmates were starved, brutally and systematically tortured, medically and surgically experimented on, and finally gassed and cremated. Burgett writes" "German guards were still forcing inmates to stoke the furnaces with human bodies as we tore through the barbed-wire enclosures. We witnessed atrocities that were beyond human comprehension." The Americans fought on from the Black Forest in Bavaria, to Berchtesgaden, where VE day found the Screaming Eagles finally at rest in the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's fabled mountaintop retreat. Certainly now the hard charging paratroopers could return home to enjoy the fruits of their victory, bloodied but proud, to take up family life with loved ones in a world they fought to keep free. But the war against Japan still raged, however, and the 101st was one of the two airborne divisions alerted for redeployment to the Pacific. August 1945 brought atomic relief to Burgett and millions more around the world with the surrender of Japan. On New Year's Eve, 1945, Sergeant Burgett finally returned to his home in Detroit, still just twenty years old.
Author Biography:
I was borne, Donald R. Burgett, April 5, 1925 in Detroit, Michigan. My father was a Detroit Police Officer, Mother, a housewife and mother of three sons and one daughter. I dropped out of High School after the tenth grade to enlist in the military but was too young, I then worked as a carpenter. At the age of eighteen I volunteered for the paratroopers. I fought through the entire European Campaign; Normandy, Holland, Bastogne, Austria and Germany with A. Co. 506 PIR 101st Airborne. At the end of the war there were only eleven of the original two hundred men that started with Company A. I was awarded the Bronze star, two Purple Hearts the ETO Ribbon with two Bronze Invasion Arrowheads, and four campaign Stars, there U.S. Presidential Citations, The Combat Infantryman's Badge, Two Croix de Guerre of France, Two Croix de Guerre of Belgium, one Fourraguere of Belgium. One Orange Lanyard of Holland, a Victory in Europe Medal and an Army of occupation Medal. Most recently, the French Legion of Honor Medal in 2014. I was discharged as Sergeant, squad leader, paratrooper. 101st Airborne Division. I arrived home January 1, 1946, twenty years old. I could not vote, I could not sign a legal contract, I could not buy a beer. I was not old enough. I could not rest and bumped around the country working at many jobs. Returning to Michigan I met and married my wife, Twyla. We had five children and now have eleven grandchildren and 23 great grand children. Twyla and I moved into the Howell area in 1967 and built our home. I have written and published four well received books; Currahee!, Road to Arnhem, Seven Roads to Hell and Beyond the Rhine. As I now hold complete rights to my four titles, I am currently reprinting and making them available to the public. At eighty-nine years of age I am still working, readying my fifth book for publication.
