STUTTGART, Germany — Sixty years after killing German soldiers and helping defeat their army, Miguel Escalera wondered how he’d be received in Germany.

“It was fierce fighting,” said Escalera, a retired staff sergeant. “The 100th ID was well known to the Germans.

“We are happy to see the animosity of war is forgotten. We get along fine, even the old soldiers and the old people. I’m very happy, and for that reason I will continue to come back.”

Escalera and about 10 other veterans from the 100th Infantry Division came to Stuttgart on Saturday as part of a 60th anniversary tour of where they fought in northeast France and southwest Germany.

The battles, including a final onslaught 40 miles to the north in Heilbronn, were some of the last major battles of World War II. Escalera, who’d heard about the persecution of Jews in Germany, said he came to the war, “with my heart full of anger.”

“But my anger was not with the German people,” Escalera said. “It was with Hitler and the Nazis.”

Escalera, a Dominican, said he entered a building in Bitche, France, where about a dozen German soldiers were sleeping. He climbed through an air vent from the basement to the second floor and called his battalion colonel for instructions. Instead of a dropping a grenade on the sleeping Germans, he went into the woods and hid.

His company came and took the building. One of his comrades died from a bullet through the head.

“I remember his name; it was Garland Turner,” Escalera said. “He was from Arkansas.”

Escalera said another comrade, Vito Biondo, used to take the pin out of a hand grenade every time a German patrol passed, just in case he needed to toss it, then would replace the pin. One time, Escalera said, Biondo failed to replace the pin and blew himself up.

Escalera was awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star with three clusters, Presidential Citation with one cluster and Combat Infantry Badge for his performance during the war.

Pfc. William Glazier was reading a copy of Stars and Stripes, while staking out a pair a houses where German soldiers were holed up, when a bullet flew past his head.

“I still remember the sound of the bullet hitting the rock or trees right behind me,” Glazier said. “He had me in his sights. Fortunately he missed and I’m here … 60 years later.”

At Patch Barracks, the vets were hosted by Air Force Maj. Gen. Edward LaFountaine at the U.S. European Command headquarters building.

Army Col. Brian Perry, one of EUCOM’s historians, delivered a presentation where the vets learned that EUCOM was founded in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1952, moved to Paris in 1954 and to Stuttgart in 1967.

Perry said that EUCOM was thinking of changing its name to better reflect the command’s area of responsibility, which now includes Russia and most of the African continent.

The 100th ID was slow moving and not glorified compared to General Patton’s tankers to the north. The foot soldiers advanced 1,000 feet per month, Escalera said, while the tanks could advance 10 miles in an hour. Patton and the tanks got the press, but this month, the 100th ID is getting the glory.

“It’s very exciting because we get to see where we fought,” Glazier said. “Some of us found our old foxholes.”