Flags from pieces of paper

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“We were greeted by crowds of people with home-made American flags from pieces of paper. They offered us beer and cakes, and we knew that those were their last morsels of food,” James Duncan recalled. During World War 2, Sergeant James H. Duncan Snr was commander of the “F” Company of the 38th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division of the US Army, which liberated Pilsen and Domažlice. Duncan remembers the liberation of Pilsen as one of the most emotional and happiest moments of his life: “I was nineteen years old then. The only moments that can compete with the liberation are when I married my wife and when my son was born.” He had obtained a camera from a captured German officer, found a stock of film in the ruins of a Pilsen house, and documented those significant moments of freedom. Even today his collection of several hundred photos speaks in volumes regarding the atmosphere of those first days and weeks following the liberation.

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James H. Duncan

James H. Duncan Snr was a sergeant in “F” Company of the 38th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division of the US Army. Second Division landed in France during the invasion of British and American soldiers on 7 June 1944, on “D+1 Day.” His unit fought the Germans in France, Belgium and West Germany. They were then re-assigned from the 1st to the 3rd US Army under the command of General George Patton. After fighting the German 11th Panzer Division, they arrived in Domažlice and Pilsen and liberated the cities.

Patton Memorial Pilsen

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The monument to the U.S. Army in Pilsen was inaugurated on May 5, 2005, to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Pilsen and southwestern Bohemia in 1945 and the end of World War II in Europe. The memorial is located in a building which before the First World War housed the editorial board of Masaryk's magazine "The New Era." The museum documents the last raids in western Bohemia and the bombing of the Škoda factory, the progress of the U.S. Army into Czechoslovakia and the deployment of U.S. soldiers until November 1945.

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Flags from pieces of paper

James H. Duncan