[RSBob]

My dad grew up in Germany during WWII. He was just a kid during the war and is going to be 89 in August, a US citizen when he turned 21. He is currently writing his bio. Here is an excerpt when he was 8. There are many more similar to this.

We had rolled along in the train all night
Then we slowed down to enter a station. MESCHEDE said the sign.
It seemed like a small town. We stopped. A few people got off, a few people got on the train.
We were sitting there for maybe 10 minutes. Why are we not moving on?
I was sitting by the window, looking out. Suddenly I noticed a commotion outside. The uniformed station master who at departure time usually raises his green pedal signaling the train engineer to leave the station, acted strangely.
He was running back and forth on the pier, shouting something and waiving his pedal in the air.
He finally dashed forward yelling at the engineer. The train then started to move forward slowly. But I was not gaining speed. It just crawled along at walking speed.
We finally got to the outskirts of town, passing a few last houses, and then the train stopped. We were sitting on an about six foot high earthen dam above green soggy wet looking flat pasture land.
A two meter high cyclone fence ran parallel to the dam at ground level.
After a few minutes of nervous silence a deep humming sound began to fill the air, getting stronger by the second. Allied fighter planes!
Then we saw them. A whole swarm of single engined planes heading for our train broadside at low altitude.
All hell broke loose. Bullets were hitting the train like a hail storm. People were dropping to the floor screaming. Glass from windows was flying. I slid to the floor next to my mother. Close by a girl was screaming “My leg, my leg!’
The planes passed over us, disappearing in the distance.
Several of the soldiers on board yelled “Everybody off the train, fast ,fast. They will be back”
I don’t know how I got out. I found myself sliding down the embankment on my back, my mother already ahead of me on the ground. In an instant the cyclone fence was bent flat to the ground by the sheer weight of the fleeing people.
I suddenly realized that the cap I had been wearing was gone. I looked back up to the train. I saw the cap lying there. As fast as I could I crawled back up. I grabbed it and slid back down the embankment.
I heard my mother yelling ‘Werner, Werner’. She was running across the wet meadow toward the houses. I caught up with her.
We could hear plane engines again. They were returning.
We ran towards the house closest to us. The front door was wide open, and people were running inside. Mother was ahead of me. She made it through the door. As I was about three or four feet from the door, I saw dust and wood splinters falling in front of me. I looked up. Two large caliber bullets stuck in the door frame just above my head.
I made it through the door into the house and jumped down some stairs into the basement where several people had taken refuge already. Mother was there, breathless but alright. We hugged each other and cried.
We sat there for about an hour listening to the noise outside. There were explosions, close and distant, and much yelling and screaming. Then things got quiet.
When we got outside we looked around, stunned. Several of the homes were burning. People were running in all directions. Some were yelling at us, that all this was our fault because our train had attracted the planes.
Finally Mother said, “let’s get back to the train”
As we rounded a corner, we saw our train in the open field. The train engine was sitting on its haunches, the front of the engine pointing straight into the sky.