As a teenager stocking shelves at a Pennsylvania grocery store, Darrell Bush couldn’t have imagined the horrors he’d witness a few years later at the Dachau concentration camp as he served in the US Army during World War II.
Darrell went from the grocery store to basic training, where he learned to be a scout—a particularly dangerous job in the army—always out front, and often alone. Later, in the Battle of the Bulge, he rescued fellow soldiers in subzero temperatures before being shot five times and collapsing in the snow. Only a handful from his company survived. “Most of us were young kids. It’s hard to talk about it,” said Darrell.
He woke up in a hospital, far from the field of battle. They patched him up and sent him back out to fight in France and Germany.
Shortly before the war ended 80 years ago today, Darrell and a few others in his company were sent to a just-liberated camp they knew nothing about: Dachau. He stepped through the gates and into a situation no training could have prepared him for. He never forgot what he saw.
Watch Darrell and two other US Army veterans share what they witnessed in Dachau. >>
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