Hundreds gather to commemorate US convoy that led to German surrender

Hundreds of people gathered on Monday to watch a column of around 30 World War II era US Army vehicles drive through the town of Hořice in the Pardubice Region, the Czech News Agency reports.

The event was part the so-called Velichovky Mission, which, since 1997, has been commemorating both the end of the Second World War and the trip taken by a convoy of the 23rd reconnaissance squadron of General George Patton’s 3rd Army to the spa town of Velichovky, where they transported a captured German colonel to tell the commander of Germany’s Army Group Centre, Ferdinand Schörner, that the war was over. After negotiating his capitulation, the column returned to Plzeň in Western Bohemia, which was being controlled by the Americans at the time.