"Infantrymen of 100th Division raise flag above Bitche, Lorraine, France, March 1945.<br /> <br /> ""Among the first to enter Bitche was E Company's commander, Capt. Thomas H. Garahan, who went to the top floor of one of the taller buildings.  Leaning out a window, he proudly displayed the first American flag to fly over the conquered city.  The banner had not been supplied by the division's quartermasters but had been hand-sewn during the three months the city was under siege by Maria Oblinger, proprietress of a popular inn closed down by German occupiers.  Fiercely loyal to the Allied cause, she had crafted the flag while huddling with her family in the stone-arched cellar of the inn, Auberge de Strasbourg, during the city's seemingly interminable shelling.   Working by the light of safety lamps and compelled to hide the flag, she risked arrest and deportation to a concentration camp had her handiwork been discovered"".  - Edward G.Longacre, ""War In The Ruins"", page 209."
{}