I was out standing guard one night in Czech Republic and I was listening to the BBC and they came over with "The War had ended."� In that town of Pilson, the VIP's decided that they wanted to entertain the troops and they rounded up a real circus with lions and tigers and horses. I got on a detail with another GI with our jeep and we were supposed to go round up supplies for this circus.

We went to slaughterhouses for meat for the tigers and lions and also got into one warehouse that was all full of chocolates; even a breadhouse. We had authority to confiscate if they didn�t give up their supplies. The army would give them vouchers to later redeem what we used for the troops, but most probably never did anything with it.

Bob Hope came in there one time and put his show on. He was real good in concert and I sat down not to far from the stage and there must have been about 10000 GI's in that town square.

The last two or three days of the war I was assigned to a little village in a valley to radio duty at a cross road and that cross road turned out to be all of the Russian army that was coming forward. When they came to the line 1/4 east of this village, there were a lot of Czech people who had been abused by everyone all throughout the war. Some of the German troops got cut up with axes and weapons by these displaced people (they all hated each other) and I was ordered to not do anything.

I was there for two days and by the time I left there, the military people were separating everyone into these different fields and were held in there as a staging area until they figured out where to put everyone.

I was waiting to be shipped back to the states to see my sick mother and she got permission from the senator to approve my leave of absense. After that I was still on duty on a ship over to Japan, but halfway there the war had ended. After that they shipped me back to Boston. They put me on a train with a bunch of other GIs� to Harrisburg. They were discharging people at this facility and I went through a line there and they said well "Taylor we'll call you when you get your discharge and in the mean time your on leave." About 6 weeks later I got a telegram for a discharge. I was totally not expecting it and I think they had to of made a mistake. That was the day before thanksgiving in 1945.