Figure 1.--This Wirephoto shows a German boy assisting American soldiers find a sniper. The caption read, "Yanks seek the enemy in Worms-Germany. U.S. infantrymen of Fifth Division, U.S. Third Army are aided by a German youth as they search for eneny snipers in the wrecked buildings of Worms, on the left bank of the Rhine south of Mainz." Notice the infantry man's walkie talkie. The photograph is dated March 29. The caption does not explain why a German boy would be helping the Americans. There are several reasons. The Germans by this stage of the War were executing civilans and soldiers who were not resisting the Allies. Perhaps a family member was executed. Or one way the Allies reacted to snipers was to plaster the area with artillery fire. Perhaps his patents told him to help.

Worms is a German city on the western bank of the Rhine in the southern Rhineland a few kilometers north of Mannheim and 25 miles south of Mainz. It was one of the last pockets in the Rhineland that remained in German hands. To reduce the German resistance, the city was heavily bombed by the Royal Air Force (February 21 and March 18, 1945). The RAF February 21 attack centered on the main train station to prevent supplies from reaching German troops still fighting in the southern Rhineland. There were also chemical plants southwest of the inner city. Large areas of the central city were destroyed. The historic Worms Cathedral was badly damaged. The second raid occurred just before the Americans entered the city (about March 21). By this time the Allies had crossed the Rhine at several points to the north and south and were pouring into the Reich. The 6th Army Group made an assault across the Rhine (March 26). At Worms the Seventh Army's XV Corps established a bridgehead which it consolidated with the southern shoulder of the Third Army's bridgehead (March 27). The initial resistance resulted in some hard fighting, but German resistance soon disipated. The XV Corps began moving east. There was no longer an organized German friont line. There was only isolated resistance in village strong points. Heavily damaged Worms became a rear area.