This is a request from Don, one Wartime veteran from 1st Squad, 2nd Plat. (Sgt Hanlon), 2nd Bn., G Co. (Capt Evans), 327th Glider Infantry Regiment (101st A/B Div). This very precise informations and request about a Belgian Family was sent to me yesterday from Kevin Brooks, a Facebook friend in the UK.
The question is : you do have the farm location. Do you know the place ?
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Dec
11
2009
Many of you guys will probably say that this doesn’t happen. Many of you guys will say that the Russians weren’t that way. Many of you will say many things and I will ask you back : do you was there ?
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Dec
07
2009
As Veterans of World War II we often live our daily lives and soon forget many of the events that were part of our lives during our Service in the war effort. One tragic event that I will never forget was the terrible Horsa Glider Crash on the Greenham Commons Air Base on December 12, 1944, some 65 years ago.
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Dec
03
2009
Also found on a disk, some interesting archives about the SS Unterstrumfuhrer Michael Wittman who became one of the best King Tiger Tank Commander and was later killed in Normandy during the Liberation of France in 1944.
These papers are not in really good shape but they are readable.
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Nov
30
2009
The rest of that day is history. Personally, I spent it praying for the invaders … and, like the rest of his official family, aching with sympathy for our apprehensive Boss.
Gen Eisenhower stood the appalling strain for another day. Then, in the early morning of June 7 it was 0720-H, just twenty-six hours after H-Hour he left for Normandy’s beaches. I fled to the lonely comfort of our trailer-headquarters. Working on the General’s “fan mail” never seemed so difficult, so unimportant; but it helped smother worries.
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Nov
10
2009
Category : Archive Stories, George Day MOH
I got shot down over N-Vietnam in 1967, a Squadron Commander. After I returned in 1973, I published 2 books that dealt a lot with “real torture” in Hanoi. Our make believe President is branding our country as a bunch of torturers when he has no idea what torture is.
As for me, put thru a mock execution because I would not respond…, pistol whipped on the head…, same event… Couple of days later… hung by my feet all day. I escaped and a couple of weeks later, I got shot and recaptured. Shot was OK… what happened afterwards was not.
They marched me to Vinh… put me in the rope trick, trick… almost pulled my arms out of the sockets… Beat me on the head with a little wooden rod until my eyes were swelled shut, and my unshot, unbroken hand a pulp.
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Oct
29
2009
Suddenly the plane shot upward, roaring away from the airfield. We all smashed back against our seats. Maybe the wheels won’t come down, someone said in a small voice. Snuffy Nixon, the navigator, stuck his head in the cabin and broke the silence. Don’t worry, folks. I just got mixed up in my figuring and picked the wrong country. Not France ! we cried. No, said Snuffy, it’s not France. But it’s not England, either. He grinned over at me. This is Kay’s home. We almost landed in southern Ireland !
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Oct
27
2009
Big Brass gathered for the Cairo Conference were concerned mostly with world-wide strategy. But they also wanted to hear testimony on the war raging right there in the Mediterranean… so Gen Marshall dispatched a special C-54 to bring the star witness. Instead of flying over in lonely pomp, Gen Eisenhower made a characteristic gesture. He invited about a dozen of his lower-rank staff members to go along : There’s no use wasting all the space in this big plane, he explained. Besides, it may be the only chance you’ll ever get to visit the Middle East.
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Oct
24
2009
General Eisenhower told me about it as we drove down from the villa, where I picked him up every morning, to the hotel headquarters of AFHQ in Algiers : It’s a top level secret, he confided, but I can tell you because you’re in on it. He smiled. In a week or so you’re going to be driving the President of the United States.
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Oct
23
2009
For Me, that strange late Spring was filled with the scent of orange blossoms. I couldn’t smell the ordinary jasmine, the poppy fields; I could neither see nor hear the war being readied against Mussolini. I expected to be married before June melted into the African summer. Dick, now a full colonel, was in Oran with II Corps HQs. Gen Eisenhower not only promised each of us at least several days’ leave after our marriage, already approved by the Army after its usual ninety-day waiting period; he also offered, as a sort of refuge from the war, the use of his little farm outside Algiers. We would have a full-fledged honeymoon in North Africa. Dick arrived in Algiers the last week of May, en route to Gen Truscott’s 3rd Inf Div’ Hqs at Mateur. Ive got a command, at last, he told me. Got what I always wanted, a regiment and actual field duty.
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Oct
19
2009
Troopship life evolved into a world without privacy, a world of restless boredom and endless rumor. Fortunately, my two cabin companions were old friends : Ethel Westermann, the dispensary nurse who had been out to Telegraph Cottage for innumerable bridge sessions, and Jean Dixon, a friendly Washington girl whose British husband had been killed in the Royal Air Force. We took turns sleeping on a dirty mattress wedged into the floor beside a double-decker bunk. With three separate sittings for each meal, we spent much of the days inching along the deck in snake-like lines. Even loafing space was rationed. We queued, slept, and strolled; strolled, slept, and queued.
Between times, we joined the gossip-manglers.
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Apr
28
2009
Some weeks ago I was in Lanzerath, Belgium and was interviewing a left alone old men who was a German Pioneer in the Warsaw Getho in Poland. Is military job was as a Pioneer to blow doors away to allow the SS Killers to enter houses and kill Men, Women, Children and even Pets. It was just before Germany had decided to erase the city from the planet. After talking over 4 hours, he told me in German : You know Gunter since December 1945 when I was sent back home I wasn’t able (we are in 2009) to sleep a single night. When I asked what the trouble was he just said : the most terrible are those dead that refuses to die. I will try one day to publish this over 4 hours interview but I have to translate it first in English because of the terrible things that he told me.
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Apr
04
2009
Inevitably, I had heard of the impending North African invasion. Talk in the back seat of my staff car was more Top Secret than anything on paper. In general, I knew about as much about Torch Operation as most senior commanders in the early autumn of 1942. One month before the birthday party I had taken Gen Eisenhower out to Telegraph Cottage in a hurry. For once he seemed preoccupied. He obviously didn’t want to talk; I had long made it a habit not to ask questions, ever. As we sped through Kensington he mumbled something about ‘big doings for a colonel’. The rest of the ride was in heavy silence. But Generals, three-star Generals don’t usually get excited over colonels. I knew something big was up. I don’t know how long we’ll be here, the General said as he got out at the cottage.
Mickey will look after you.
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Mar
06
2009
Within a fortnight I was driving a new general, Carl (Tooey) Spaatz. The now-famous and retired Tooey Spaatz was, in early 1942, a grimly silent major general. As chief of the new Eighth Air Force, he had a gigantic job. And he spent every waking moment pondering over problems involved in the daring principle of daylight bombing. A rather unspectacular, balding man who would hardly stand out in a crowd, he called to mind that pensive statue : The Thinker. He concentrated so intensively that I often thought he was asleep. Naturally, he had no time for the ordinary little details of everyday life. He was, in fact, coldly impatient with them. That’s how I came to drive for General Spaatz. His temper had finally boiled over because his sergeant was late again in arriving at a conference. The Yank chauffeur was naturally bewildered like many other Americans by the maze of tangled little streets which history had forced upon London. When the General heard of my MTC experience, he requested that I be loaned out to his headquarters immediately.
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Feb
22
2009
Category : Archive Stories, Harry Truman 1915
When Harry S. Truman was born, May 8, 1884, his father, John Truman, marked the day by nailing a mule shoe above the doorway and by planting a new pine seedling to grow with his firstborn son. While the gesture to provide good luck lasted in the long run for the 33rd president, his early years were plagued with accidents, poor eyesight, and a nearly paralyzing disease. Harry, however, grew up surrounded by loving, strong-willed, and doting parents, grandparents and other relatives. These strong relationships enabled him to accept himself no matter what external problems he would face. One such relative who greatly influenced his early years was Grandfather Young. Solomon Young was openly taken with his little grandson and frankly bragged about what an amazing little fellow he was. Vivian was Harry’s younger brother by two years. He had long curls, which his mother refused to cut. Evidently, the long curls bothered Grandfather Young to the point he decided to take control of the situation.
One day, he had Harry help him haul Vivian – highchair and all – out onto the south porch where Grandfather Young quickly gave Vivian a short haircut. Harry’s mother was furious, but said nothing out of respect for her father. A few days later, Harry decided to experiment with his own hair and comb it a different way. He pulled a big chair up close to a mirror in order to see the back of his head. He kept leaning in the chair until he fell over backwards, breaking his collarbone – his first, but not his last broken bone. Harry was particularly close to his mother, a college educated and outspoken woman. She valued art, reading, and music and saw to it that Harry had the same interests. She taught Harry to read from the large print Bible before he was five, but she noticed he had a hard time reading newsprint and distinguishing objects coming down the road. Then came the Fourth of July celebration in Grandview where the climax was a series of colorful rockets bursting in the air. Harry jumped at the exploding sounds but could not see the shiny showers of the fireworks.
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Feb
19
2009
Category : Archive Stories, Colored MOH
I was on the bus to Camp Wolters, and I put my duffel down and went to take a seat and the bus driver said, Get out of that seat, nigger, and get in the back where you belong ! Now, if it had gone to fisticuffs, which it could have, I probably would have gotten killed. They probably would have hanged me — I mean, Texas was pretty bad then.
But I kept my temper in check. It wasn’t easy at the time, but I remember something else my grandfather told me : Don’t hate, because if you hate, hate will destroy you.
After basic I was sent to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where because I could read, write, spell and operate a typewriter, I was made a company clerk. Then sometime in ‘42, a white officer, I don’t recall his name, told me to sign up for officer candidates’ school, so I did.
I was commissioned a second lieutenant on Jan 11 1943. See, what was happening was, they were organizing an all-black division, the 92/ID. It was the Buffalo Division, and we were Buffalo Soldiers, a name given to black units during the Indian wars because our black skin and nappy hair made them think we were buffaloes.
This is June or July of ‘43 and the division had come together at Fort Huachuca, and on this particular day all the officers were called up to headquarters. At the time when you went to headquarters and you were black, even if you were an officer, you went in the back door. You don’t walk in the front door at division headquarters.
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Feb
19
2009
What is going on today ? I can not hear any artillery shot. No rifle firing. It seems that all my friends are dead and I have a strange feeling like I am the only one still alive. Since 1915 I have heard for the first time a bird singing. I have tried to see it but I can not. There is no place for a bird to rest a little over here. No trees, no hedgerow, nothing. Just the stinky soil of the battlefield. Just the dead, the putrefaction, the flees, the worms, the rats then mud, stinky water, and blackened blood.
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Feb
17
2009
This War Department movie is announcing the end of the Old World. I agree with the Chief of Staff US Army George C. Marshall and President Truman : Atomic Power will save a lot of life on our side !
Unfortunately – and even today – no one is able to say what the costs were to the other side !
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Feb
15
2009
This is the wartime story of an American GI. In fact, this is the story of a GI like many other GI’ stories. It’s about friendships, cold, winter, rain, snow, mud, blood, war and dead. But this story has something else. It is the story over one of these GIs who were in Verviers and Liège during the period September 1944 to December 1944. This GI, Orville Iverson – Ivy – had built a strong friendships with the Jacquet Family from Verviers. Especially Claude and Ninette.
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