THE SMILING SOLDIERS
"Weika Coenraad, of Dahlonega, Georgia, was a little girl in Holland during the War, and has vivid memories of the American soldiers who liberated her town in 1945. She’s now an American citizen. [She writes:]
’I was just a little girl during the Second World War, born in Haarlem, Holland, in 1937...
The scariest thought in my mind were soldiers, with black shiny boots and a gun; nobody ever smiled, there was nothing to smile about...
The most severe winter in decades was the winter in 1944...Everybody was hungry and our daily meal consisted of sugar beets, which we now feed to the hogs, and tulip bulbs...
Suddenly there was spring, the bad weather was gone, and it was May 1945. Big tanks rolled through the streets and for the very first time I saw people who smiled and waved to us. They were soldiers! It was like a miracle--they were supposed to be scary, and now they were friendly and smiled. They threw Hershey’s chocolate bars and chewing gum into the crowd. Something we had never seen or
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