The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-06-02

war has only recently passed that V
 The sullen, systematic Germans in Karlsruhe, which is occuped by the French, have already begun to clear away same of the rubble left after Allied bombers had taken an interest in the town. People are living in houses which almost without exception show some sign of war - the roof shingles are torn up, the walls are cracked, practi- cally every window is closed up with boards instead of glass.
 Debris is piled high in the center of the streets while the Wrecks of cars line the sidewalks. The Ger names in Karlsruhe are obseQuious- ly polite - they doff their hats when an Allied uniform passes - but their faces show that they are not bit happy about it all.
 Streets Without Life
 Most German towns have a cur few imposed by the Allies which varies with the location. It is rather an eerie feeling to travel through a village which you know is inhabited, but where not soul is to be seen on the streets.
 Out in the country practically every bridge has been blown up and the military vehicles cross rivers and canals on temporary pontoon bridges. Along the roadside signs of war are abundant - overturned trucks. cars, tanks, wrecked planes, spiked cannon, useless pillboxeS, abandoned slit trenches, and fields full of deep ruts showing how the tanks deployed to get at the enemy.
 l did not see a single abandoned car or truck with wheels. Tires are so valuable that even if the vehicle is wrecked the wheels are recov- cred. In cities. cars are sitting on their chassis, forlorn and wheel less; in the country, they are over turned and equally wheelless.
 Want GIs To Clear Mines
 Farmers were blowing as usual in those fields which did not con- tain mines. Some farmers have had the temerity to ask American officers to have their fields cleared of German mines by American doughboys, so that they could go back to work in them.
 In Kaserslautern, where the American army installed in a huge barracks formerly occupied by the Wehrmacht, wives of SS men, who once inhabited the off, cers' apartments, are waging hopeless campaign to get back into their homes. They cannot seem to realize that they have forfeited any right to their possessions until the Army is ready to give them back. Much of the furniture and stores they had was footed by their SS husbands from German -occu- pied Europe, and their pleas are consistently turned down.
 The German people I saw ap- parently refuse to accept any re- sponsibility for the terrors they have inflicted on the rest of Eu- rope. and cannot understand why, though defeated, they are not al- lowed to continue living on the fat of the land as the Master Race They want coal, potatoes and their furniture these well-fed haus- frauen, and they make daily claims for these things.
 People Search Ruins
 There is no civilian traffic in the city streets except for vehicles such as garbage trucks and others es- sential to the sanitary, supply or food aspects of city life. Street cars stand with shattered windows and twisted rails where they stood when bombs smashed the power plants. The whole atmosphere is sad. People poke about in the ruins to recover buckets full of coal, or wood for cooking, or to see whether there is anything reasonably whole left.
 The lovely Black Forest ap- parently has been scarcely touched, but one sees trees that had been felled to make road blocxades now pushed into the ditches by the ad- Allies. Along the roads the Army has placed signs in sequence with such warnings as: You are Germany" Don't frater- nize," Carry your arms,' and so on. One wag added his own sign to the end of the row of trees on which the others had been tackled.