"Often the encounter with literature and history changes our own thinking and writing. ("The Valley" is) an example of my creative response to one section of a lengthy interview with a World War II veteran.
(This is a comment from) Major Richard Winters, 101st Airborne Division, (as he) discuss(es) the final weeks of World War II. American troops, advancing through Germany, are far outnumbered by the still-armed, and surrendering, soldiers of the Third Reich. Major Winters describes the journey:
"'We started down the Ruhr valley and after we left the Dusseldorf area where there was a mass surrender of (the German General) Model's army, 300,000, 350,000 in one clump. And then as we started down the towards Heidelberg, Ulm, Munich, then you had the big groups surrendering. Now you know it's over, and you just hope that there isn't some wild group that you get, a hard-headed group, that will cut you down because you're going through there with small units and there's thousands of men, all with weapons....you could see the troops lying on the banks. They all had weapons; they were far outnumbering us. Every mile there were more men that we had—in front of us, well there were none in front of us—or in back of us, and they all had weapons. And all it takes is one small group of hard heads and they could cut you down— boom—so you went with your fingers crossed.'"
http://osf1.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/responses.html