TIDIOUTE, Pa.; HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP — World War II veterans are disappearing each day in numbers sometimes resembling the bloodiest of the war days. With their passing, there�s less and less first-hand understanding of what nearly tore the world apart 70 years ago.

Authors Kurt Vonnegut, who memorialized his experience during the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, in �Slaughterhouse 5� and Joseph Heller, who did the same about the Army Air Force in �Catch 22� are both among the dead.

They tasted fame and fortune after their World War II escapades.

Others led quieter lives in small-town America, but they retained the memories of war. Many are living among us. They�re stooped and wrinkled fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. They�re retired steelworkers and electrical engineers who spent their post-war working years at places like �the Malleable,� Sharon Steel, and �the Westinghouse.�

It�s tough to imagine them as young men on a tour of the world, their destination unknown, their objective mostly to protect and defend the rest of the Allied troops waging war against Germany, Italy and Japan.

�Your whole life can hinge on a matter of a few yards,� 94-year-old veteran Claude Musgrove of Hempfield Township remembered.

That�s the distance that could separate someone from triggering a mine explosion or getting hit by hostile fire.

�War is an atrocity,� said Musgrove, who served as photographer for the 164th Engineer Combat Battalion.

The images Musgrove captured of Americans and Germans proved to him that on both sides were just other people, he said.

�I could not shoot the Germans,� he said.

But the young soldiers did what they were ordered to do.

�The veneer of civilization almost completely disappears when you�re in the Army,� Musgrove said. �I hated this about the war. They were people like us.�

He remembers the small things that impressed German prisoners.

�They hadn�t had coffee in years,� he said.

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The men were drinking coffee on a rainy afternoon this past August in the grassy field adjacent to the Tippy Canoe Inn. They spoke perfect English, although they wore the colors of the Third Reich. They were camped a few hundred yards away from the Americans, who were using all manner of GI field implements � that�s galvanized iron, not government-issue � and eating lunch on the banks of the Allegheny River near Tidioute in Warren County.

That day, the Allegheny was the mighty Rhine River, separating American troops from the German heartland.

Tidioute became Remagen, the city that boasted the last intact bridge over the river.

The actual battle for that bridge played out over several days.

World War II re-enactors from across the country condensed it into an afternoon.

The sound of small-arms fire echoed up the hill above the river. It grew in intensity until re-enactors appeared in the smoky mist. They exchanged volleys of bullets, grenades and artillery shells that felled men on both sides and, and German forces ultimately tried in vain to destroy the bridge that at least played a symbolic victory for the Allied soldiers: Remagen was the first place Americans crossed the Rhine.

The battle for that bridge has been immortalized in books and in the movies. Last summer, more than 1,000 people gathered in the tiny western Pennsylvania town to watch the re-enactment.

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Claude Musgrove doesn�t need to see a re-enactment to remember what happened at Remagen. He crossed the bridge March 8, 1945, the morning after the span was captured.

He took part in the very first re-enactment of the events there when he took pictures of American soldiers dressed in German frog suits, pretending to be captured Germans.

It was done for the newsreels, Musgrove said.

�They came with all their Hollywood paraphernalia and filmed our soldiers in the German frog suits, coming out of the Rhine with arms upraised,� Musgrove said.

He remembers low-level bombing by German planes that were shot down in a �hail of bullets� from American machine guns.

He remembers two German fighter pilots who ejected from their planes and parachuted to earth.

�However, we were told to hate the Germans, so many soldiers fired on them and they were probably dead when they hit the ground,� Musgrove said.

The Germans also tried V-1 buzz bombs, ballistic missiles and M-162 jet fighter bombers, Musgrove remembers.

�The most vivid in my memory were the dog fights between the German M-109 fighters and our fighters near the bridge,� he said. �Despite all this, the bridge remained standing until it was no longer needed.�

�The bridgehead scene is spectacular,� a young reporter named Andy Rooney wrote for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes. �Vehicles creep over the threadlike span at the enforced five miles per hour speed.

�German shells, fired from several miles south along the Rhine, plop into the air,� his story continues. �From a ringside seat on the Rhine banks you can sit all day and watch slow cruising, ancient JU 87s, the original dive bomber, move in and out of the cloud banks over the bridge at 15 to 20 minute intervals.�

Musgrove said he probably met Andy Rooney at the time, but he was just a young reporter then, not the columnist and TV curmudgeon of �60 Minutes� fame.

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Smoke from pyrotechnics obscured the bridge at Tidioute. The bam-bam-bam ratatat of blanks being fired was a crowd-pleaser as men choreographed being shot, their bodies piling up on the hillside above the bridge.

Pat Tarasovitch and other members of the Erie-based 99th Infantry Divisions�s 393rd Regiment Easy Co., World War II re-enactment group, along with several others from across the country re-created the battle that was a significant moral victory for the Allied cause.

Cartwright Fireworks of Franklin loaded the bridge with charges to re-create the destruction the Germans leveled on the Ludendorff Bridge after the Americans took it and used it as a crossing point for two days.

Although he didn�t attend the re-enactment, Musgrove said he�s glad groups keep that chapter of world history alive.

�I think it�s an excellent idea,� he said. �You can write about this stuff, but to actually see it (helps.) They say a picture�s worth a thousand words.�

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Musgrove was a packrat during the war and his collection of World War II era photographs and the German artifacts he �liberated� during the war helps keep the story alive.

The yellowing, black-and-white photographs show GIs, many of them barely out of high school.

Musgrove also remembers the vineyards that stretched �as far as the eye could see� along the Rhine and the �fine wine and champagne� he tasted there. He saw the church at Wittenberg where Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses and remembers the trip back to the states on the Queen Mary when the war ended.

The lights of New York City welcomed American GIs back home.

�The Andrews Sisters came on board and performed for us,� he said.

He also remembers the German towns that were destroyed and the people who died.

�These were small towns. The bombs over there didn�t discriminate between kids going to school and soldiers,� he said. �When we dropped bombs, everyone gets hit: little kids, babies, pregnant mothers.�

The experience taught him to enjoy the small things in life, Musgrove said.

�I go out on the porch and I appreciate every day,� he said. �What a beautiful place this earth is. We don�t appreciate it.�