Three Days to a Purple Heart
April 14, 1945 — U.S. Army Corporal Haig Derderian sat on a hillside with soldiers from his 714th Company B Tank Battalion in Unternesselbach, Germany. It was about 5 pm on a warm spring day in this tiny German village about 50 miles west of Nuremberg. Men in the tank battalion had orders to stay […]
Letters from World War 2: The Father-in-Law I Never Met
Haig Derderian sat in his M-4 Medium Tank in Herrlisheim, France, just across the border from Germany. It was a foggy winter morning January 9th, 1945, and Haig was fighting for his life in Company B of the 714th Tank Battalion. They were fighting the Nazis and this was World War 2. Crammed inside 34 […]