In late 1944, German Pvt. Paul-Alfred Stoob was one of the many German troops quickly retreating from Allied forces. During his withdrawal, he was hit with fire from a Sherman tank and wounded in his head and leg. When he finally made it home to Germany, he learned that his father was also wounded in his head and leg in the exact same town in World War I.
Stoob was a Panther tank driver taking part in the general German withdrawal in 1944 before the Battle of the Bulge temporarily halted Germany's loss in territory. After the Panther was destroyed by Allied fire, Stoob and the rest of his crew stole a truck and headed east towards Belgium.
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According to his story in Stephen E. Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Beaches of Normandy to the Surrender of Germany, Stoob and his crew were struggling to find food and supplies during their escape.
They managed to scrape together bread and some eggs before lucking out and discovering a stash of delicacies abandoned by a German headquarters unit. Only a short time after they filled their truck with the fresh food, an American Sherman crew spotted them and opened fire. Stoob was hit in the head and leg, but still tried to escape.
A panther tank
- Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
He made for a nearby cemetery and attempted to use the gravestones as cover for his escape. Before he could get away, a French priest begged for him to stop and then went and got an American medic to tend to his wounds.
Stoob spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp in the U.S. and didn't make it home until 1947. That was when he learned that his father, a veteran of World War I, had been wounded in the same unnamed village in 1914, exactly 30 years before his son.
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They weren't the only father-son duo to bond over the course of the world wars. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. served with his brothers in World War I and then invaded North Africa and Normandy in World War II with his own son, Capt. Quentin Roosevelt II. Both Roosevelts were decorated for valor in the operations and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. received the Medal of Honor posthumously for his role in the D-Day invasion.
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This article originally appeared on We Are The Mighty.
Featured photo: Wikimedia Commons
