American dancers and drummers started the main program of the Freedom Celebration in Pilsen

Commercial presentation Update: 3/05/2024 20:24
Issued by: 05/03/2024, 20:24

Pilsen – The American student marching band Stuttgart Legacy Drumline with dancers, drummers and cymbals started today the main program of the Freedom Celebration 2024 in Pilsen. After them, 25 descendants of American and Belgian veterans who liberated the city in May 1945 came to the podium in the central square of the Republic. “Thank you very much for the honor and respect,” said Kristina Pieper, the daughter of American veteran Richard Pieper, who died last March at the age of 99. For the second year in a row, none of the veterans came to Pilsen.

“My father used to say: We were young, aged 18 and 19, and we came to rid you of Nazism in 1945. Those heroes are the ones who didn’t make it. We are the luckier ones who came all the way to Pilsen,” said Pieperová . According to her, her father always spoke of Pilsen as his second home.

“Thank you for remembering our fathers and grandfathers. We are happy to be here with you and to continue to remind you of them,” said a representative of the Belgian veterans, whose name was not heard on stage.

21 cadets, children of soldiers from American air, engineering and artillery bases in Ansbach and Vilseck, Germany, then presented themselves in an exhibition with a rifle. After them, all five military history clubs, which have their campsites spread out in the garden circle near the city center, marched in and entered under the stage next to the cathedral. As the first club of the 16th Armored Division, with 40 soldiers in period American uniforms, and behind them, an American historical armored car and a semi-tracked transporter entered the field.

This was followed by the Tommy & Yankee Military History Club from Pilsen, the Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade Club or the RAF and WAAF Camp, which displays a 1:1 scale replica of the Spitfire fighter aircraft in the kits. The last was the JTF Raiders club, which represented the current US military.

After 19:00 the Pilsner Jazz Band started playing 30’s and 40’s swing. The evening will culminate in a concert by the Jazz Without Borders Big Band with singer Chuck Wansley from Los Angeles.

The weekend of the Freedom Celebrations, to which tens of thousands of people go every year, will mainly belong to the military camps of the time. On Saturday from 09:00 there will be a mass for veterans and victims of wars in the cathedral, the biggest attraction of the Sunday program is the traditional Freedom Convoy. At 11 a.m., almost 300 military historical vehicles, led by a renovated Sherman M4 tank and jeeps, will drive down Klatovská třída, in which relatives of American and Belgian veterans will be. The convoy will be accompanied by a flyover of period airplanes.

USA CR history Pilsen 1945 PHOTO OPENER