Posted on 12/26/2016 12:04:45 PM PST by Bull Snipe
When he came back he had a whole bunch of Goerring's private dinnerware with him! I walked past that stack of plates for decades, and he never told me. Less than a mile from my house was the personal dishes and cutlery of one of the chief architects of the Third Reich, come to rest in a rural North Carolina farm home.
Neat story
He never talked much about the war...
I finally understood why when I returned from Vietnam...
I had the honor of serving in the 101st from 81-84. I take great pride in that and in the history and future of that division. Screaming Eagles!
My late Uncle Fred was with the 84th. Infantry Division, at Marche, Belgium. He was wounded in early January of ‘45 but made it home alright at the end of the war. God bless all those guys. The Battle of The Bulge was the largest and bloodiest battle of the ETO in all of WW2.
My grandfather was there. 3rd Army, 26th Infantry “Yankee Division”, 101st Combat Enineer Battalion.
I used to think that too, until I read a book some years ago that actually looked at the real German casualties of the troops fighting against the 3rd Army (among other things). Not even close to those reported in the book “the War as I knew it”. much less both in tanks and casualties of men.
What was odd about it was the source material was from the German archives...which were stored in the US. No one had bothered to actually check the primary sources.
I seem to recall that the 3rd army was the worst in terms of exaggeration, the 1st army under Hodge had the best figures in terms of estimates of German casualties vs. what the Germans internal reports said.
If you consider that Patton was stopped from September to December before Metz by very weak forces, he was not all that skilled a Infantry officer. A very good cavalry officer, exactly the guy to exploit a breakthrough, but he had his blind spots.
In his relief strike to Bastogne, he faced one fairly week Falschimjager division, the 5th. He was trying to make it by the 25th, specifically for headlines. The delayed him until the 26th.
I wasn't at Bastogne, maybe 100 miles south in Ascase, Strasburg. Yes it was cold. I understand the coldest in a long time. Before the winter was over, I caught pneumonia from living in a hole and was housed in a field hospital for a week. I crossed the Rhine in an field ambulance or a truck, I don't know which, I was out of it. I feel the same way as your golfing pal. I don't mind the heat. I'M 91 and never want to be cold again.
I believe I’ve told you previously (on Homers WW2 posts) and certainly don’t mind repeating, “Thank you for your service.”
He could speak little English, but invited us up to his apartment (which act in the lower liberal NE is very, very rare), and graciously offered us "Russian pancakes." I was able to converse with him thru his wife, who was Muslim, and he revealed that he had been a political prisoner. In Siberia.
I asked him thru his wife something like how cold it was. She relayed back his answer: "I am still trying to get warm."
A classmate’s father served as a sentry. We didn’t learn, until after the father died, that he had received a commendation letter, from Patton, himself. Apparently, some officers tried to whisk the General into a Command Post, but the brave sentry wouldn’t budge, until Patton had been properly identified.
General Patton would have had it no other way. A soldier doing his duty.
We learned a lesson that week, just one of many nondescript Dads who were “only” regular guys in the community; these Clark Kents were really Supermen.
spot on, ordinary men, extraordinary accomplishment.
My Dad also spent 6-7mos in a hospital recovering from a sniper’s chest wound, and used his GI Bill to get his Chemical Engineering degree from Penn State. Mom was Army Nurse (RN) who helped take care of him, they married and moved back to York (PA) where they’d grown-up together. I came along in ‘49, my sis in ‘51. We lost Mom in ‘12 at 87. God Bless our Parents.
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