Merklín was liberated in the late morning hours of Sunday, May 6, 1945, precisely eleven months after the English/Canadian and American armies had disembarked onto the Normandy shores.
The town of Merklín was liberated in the late morning hours of Sunday, May 6, 1945. A convoy of Sherman tanks, the best-known of the American battle tanks in World War II, rode in over the Staňkovská road. Right after its arrival, its soldiers were welcomed with natural joy and cordiality; men, women, and youth greeted them waving caps and scarves. There was already a crowd on the square where the soldiers arrived (the tanks’ motors could be heard for miles). Mrs. Ilona Pálffyová welcomed them into town. Many citizens offered the liberators baked goods (cakes, pies, and more) and handed them flowers.
The American soldiers who liberated Merklín were part of Company A of the 8th Armored Division’s 58th Infantry Regiment. The division's emblem was a tricolor triangle along with the number 8 inside. The soldiers were lodged with local families; three commanding officers slept at the castle. They had their command office at House no. 3. Every day they ceremonially raised and lowered the American flag on the flagpole in front of the town hall.
The inhabitants of Merklín had positive experiences with the American soldiers; two young women, Jiřina Bláhová and Jarmila Hesová, even married two of them, rode off to be with them in the USA. Both then flew in to visit their home town no few times.
The soldiers definitively left Merklín on September 14, 1945. The whirlwind of events during a few months of 1945 gives pause for thought: In mid-April, a German SS unit numbering 150–200 men from the 11th Panzer Division rode into town. They left headed westward on May 3. Three days later, American units entered the town, and in September they left as well. Two groups of troops with diametrically different missions! This was truly a revolutionary and epochal era.
The Paths of Liberation—The Pilsen Region