Lest We Forget is a 1947 military documentary that consists of newsreels and government propaganda films, giving viewers a look at the fighting of World War II. This second reel starts off with footage of German officers surrendering to General Joseph Lawton Collins (00:05). Men fire artillery shells. Bells ring for Bastille Day. GIs dance with French women in the streets of a French town. Allied forces march along a road as part of the “battles of hedge rows.” Soldiers fire mortars and rockets. German troops surrender to the Allied forces. Tanks drive along a hedge row as they push farther into France (02:17). A GI naps next to several cows (02:50). Men sit in foxholes and read letters, while others splash and bath in a small creek. Men pray during a church service next to a barn (03:30). An artillery cannon moves into position and men load the gun with shells. Men and tanks move forward toward Saint-Lo. Men watch as planes of the U.S. Air Force attack Nazi targets from above (05:25). Footage shows the battle-scared Saint-Lo as men move through it (05:59). Tanks and trucks of the 3rd Army move through the French countryside. Men take a break from marching and rest against the wall of a demolished building, smoking cigarettes (07:08). Allied forces march into Paris, with the Arc de Triomphe in the background (07:38). Parisians wave to the soldiers and cheer them on as they march through. The 7th Army lands near the mouth of the Rhone (08:48); the force moves north and pushes through Lyon; footage shows Lyon as an abandoned, half-demolished city. There is good footage of men firing machine guns and tanks firing their guns. The charred remains of German tanks and trucks sit abandoned on a road (10:19). There is a great aerial shot of 20,000 captured German soldiers and their equipment (10:42). A woman and a band perform a song for the GIs (11:41) in Belgium or possibly Holland. Bing Crosby also sings for the soldiers. Generals Sir Bernard Montgomery and Dwight D. Eisenhower discuss upcoming plans. The film then shows a mass airborne invasion (12:34), possibly Operation Varsity. Paratroopers jump out of transport planes and parachute down to the fields below. A plane is shot and crashes off in the distance. Glider planes land in mass in an open field (13:48). One nosedives during its landing. A solider uses an axe to break apart a glider to free the trapped men inside (14:16). Next, the film shows the bridge at Nijmegan, near Eindhoven (14:22), and artillery guns firing on Aachen. Planes—they appear to be P-38s—bomb the city. Footage shows the city in the aftermath of the shelling and bombing. Soldiers and tanks push deeper into Aachen (16:00) and face stiff resistance.

There are several scenes of the heavy street fighting; with the capture of Aachen, U.S. troops raise an American flag. German refugees file out of the city (17:08). A German woman speaks with an American soldier as her children and husband stand quietly beside her. There is an aerial view of the Siegfried Line (17:45), which is followed by footage of Allied forces firing off rocket batteries. Tanks line up and fire across a field. There are shots of men launching mortars, firing artillery, and Nazi soldiers surrendering. This reel concludes with Allied forces marching through Siegfried and pushing deeper into Germany.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com