Posted on 12/25/2014 6:29:11 PM PST by WhiskeyX
[Christmas, a family, and soldiers in the Ardennes forests in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge.]
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
For later
Beautiful story-——————— true “Peace on Earth”.
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A movie has been made about this incident called “Silent Night”. I just ordered it from netflix.
BTTT ......thank you.
For my own personal Battle of the Bulge story, I feel fortunate to still exchange emails with a man who was a combat engineer during that time. This is an amazing story from one of the “Greatest Generation” that I met when “Uncle Howard” attended a family wedding. He was not a real uncle, but has always been a close friend of the family. His note is especially poignant when you realize, after his capture during the Battle of the Bulge, he escaped successfully on April 13 and the war ended less than a month later on May 8. Very likely Bill Bremley and others who stayed behind were executed as a reprisal for the escape. You can read his entire prisoner of war story at the second link below.
OK Neil – You are right. It was not until December 2008 that I found out that I no longer had to remain silent about the help I received from the Brits in Stalag IVB. I had been asked repeatedly the details of my escape on Friday the 13th of April 1945. Now I can answer.
I GUESS SOMEDAY IT WOULD BE TOLD......I VOWED NOT TO EVER DISCUSS THE DETAILS OF MY ESCAPE...NOW “THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG”....YES, I HAD THE HELP DESCRIBED. (See below narrative) AT STALAG “IVB” I WAS LOCKED IN WITH 187 BRITISH NCO’s. THERE WERE ONLY “7 YANKS” IN THIS HUT WITH ME AND I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE BEFRIENDED BY ONE OF THE “BRITS”. HE SET EVERYTHING IN MOTION. I OWE A LOT TO BILL BREMLEY OF THE BLACK WATCH. I LEARNED LATER THAT HE WAS EXECUTED BY THE “SS” SHORTLY BEFORE THE RUSSIANS LIBERATED THE CAMP. I REGRET THAT I WAS NEVER WAS ABLE TO PROPERLY THANK HIM. SOMEDAY SOON, I MAY BE ABLE TO.......AMEN Howard
Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape.
Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of ‘safe houses’ where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.
Paper maps had some real drawbacks — they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.
Someone in MI-5 (similar to America’s OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It’s durable, can be scrunched up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.
At that time there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.
By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, ‘games and pastimes’ was a category of item qualified for insertion into ‘CARE packages’ dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.
Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington’s, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were. When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.
As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington’s also managed to add: 1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass 2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together 3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!
British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a ‘rigged’ Monopoly set — by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.
Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war.
The story wasn’t declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington’s, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.
It’s always nice when you can play that ‘Get Out of Jail’ Free’ card!
I realize most of you are too young to have any personal connection to WWII, but this is still interesting.
Story verification: http://blogs.wsj.com/informedreader/2007/11/19/wwii-pows-perk-monopoly-with-real-money/
Howard Sharpell’s Prisoner of War Story http://www.wwiiexperience.com/wwiiexperience/Prisoners_of_War.html
BTTT
That Monopoly story is FASCINATING !!!!!
Monopoly,the young boy in the Christmas film clip,and I are all the same age so I enjoy WWII information.
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Wow. Interesting story, both yours and the one linked above.
Thanks for the link to this wonderful story!. Watched it, then tweeted the link.
That’s another great story, thanks for sharing.
One of my brothers and a brother in law were involved in the drive to aid the GIs trapped there. Brother was in a Combat Engineering unit and BiL was 9th Air Force ground support and he was commandeered to run fuel to Patton’s Tank corps. My other brother was a bombardier on a B17 with the 8th Air Force and was a POW in a German camp at the time. I forget the camp number but it was the scene of the Great Escape. All three are gone now
I don’t think it is available, they just list it with the unavailable tag...which they do with a lot of movies they don’t carry.
However, I just ordered it from Amazon...:)
Looks like a remarkable story.
Yeah...I had to put it on my “Wait List”.
Sometimes that takes forever.
I have never got one from that list!
I got one. just one. LOL!
To Amazon I must go!
Wow...... SERE school went into a lot of this history and more. The greatest generation of warriors imho...... thank you for the great red and the links.
God bless your uncle Howard and men like Bill Bremley....
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