In the winter of 1945, Hugh Evans’ friend died in his arms in a barren Italian battlefield. Enraged, he stormed the Nazis, shooting some and taking many hostage. He was just 20 years old. As an old man, he’d recount memories of dozens of Germans popping out of foxholes, their hands up in surrender, to a documentarian.
“And why they didn’t finish me off going over the hill is just the luck of the draw, is what it amounts to,” he said in footage from 2003 donated to the Denver Public Library. The act earned him a Silver Star commendation from the Army, but it’s not the kind of story he told his daughter, Susannah Evans LeVon.
