Posted on 11/21/2014 4:20:00 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Nice to know my memory isn’t clear gone. ;-)
One of my great-great grandmothers was an Alsation. Of course, they cleared out of there for America about one hundred and fifty years ago.
Saved them a whole lot of trouble.
Cool article on Ernie Pyle, page 14 NYT.
Didn’t know about Ernie Pyle. I even got the name confused with Gomer Pyle.
The purported author of the German memoir “Forgotten Soldier,” Guy Sajer, was Alsatian. He had trouble conversing with his fellow German soldiers. I say “purported” because there is some dispute whether Sajer actually existed.
I have enjoyed reading maps since I was very young. They say so much. One of the things you can see from maps of Alsace, Lorraine and the Ardennes is the “linguistic border” between France and Belgium on one side and Germany on the other just by tracing the linguistic changes in place names. Some of the larger places like Strasburg/Strasbourg are given alternate names, but the smaller villages and towns are not.
We love the area very much. and conservative values.
Our friends have shown us many things. Up in the Voges, cattle at 5,000 feet, panoramic view swiss, italian and french alps.
Nice airport in Mulhouse. Easy access to Switzerland and Germany.
I believe the Germans took Metz in the 1870 war. And took it rather handily IIRC.
Patton was a shameless self-promoter with a knack for knowing where and how to attack the Germans. If Patton had understood logistics better there is no doubt that he would have been the best general that the US Army would have had.
Metz was not Patton’s finest hour in WW-II. Think General Grant and Cold Harbor in the American Civil War. Patton would have done better to bypass Metz and let it starve.
More later YMMV
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Lothair's dominion was not militarily viable and Europeans fought over that middle land (and Northern Italy) for centuries.
For centuries Metz was a free city in the Holy Roman Empire, most of that time as a republic. It was peacefully absorbed into France in the 16th Century and was later fortified. I don’t believe it was successfully besieged until the Franco-Prussian War.
Thanx. I remember the story of the split vaguely. I love historical maps.
I have another connection. My dad was a scout in the third army and I’m sure he went through the region, but he never gave us much detail. D-day plus 6 all the way to Berlin.
My grandparents from Sicily 1911
"The French, who had been the first on the Rhine in November, were last to leap it..."
There is a wonderful quote from De Galle to de Lattre, but since it won't be until the end of March, I'll hold off on the quote until then.
Wow. Lucky guy.
Awesome. Thanks.
Excellent book. As far as I know, the author is still alive. I believe the experiences described in the book are accurate but given the vengeance being exacted by the Russians at the time of writing, obfuscation of anything that could connect the story teller, or his surviving friends to acts considered crimes by the Russians was necessary.
Patton couldn't bypass Metz. Ike had given the gasoline to Monte for Market Garden. Patton could have either held his position, or put his troops to use attacking the fortress cities, which he did.
Patton wasn't at his best at set-piece battles, as Monte wasn't at his best at dynamic battles. Ike should have give the fuel to Patton to drive to the Rhine, and told Monte to clear the Scheldt. But Ike let politics outweigh military judgment.
The difference is that two years earlier, Ike first heard shots fired in anger. Patton on the other hand fired shots in anger 28 years earlier.
No argument with that, had Monty taken care of the Scheldt right off the bat there was a fair chance that the supply crisis would have been greatly minimized.
Good seeing you again
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
My take on “Forgotten Soldier” is that I don’t doubt that those things happened, or at least that’s what soldiers remember happening. But they may not all have been the experience of one guy. In other words, it’s a synthesis of some common experiences. And I consider it an accurate portrayal of life on the Eastern Front.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of the experiences described in the book are those of two men; one of whom was in the Rollbahn and the other in the "Grossdeutschland".
The book begins more or less ordinary until the friends volunteer for the "Grossdeutchland" after which the story becomes extraordinary and I don't think extraordinary is the correct word for those experiences.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the author experienced and wrote about life in the Rollbahn but he ghostwrote the experiences of another man who volunteered for a combat unit but couldn't talk freely about it, particularly in postwar France.
In the book we're told the combat unit was the Grossdeutchland but the volunteering and misplaced cufftitle locations open the possibility in my mind that the man volunteered for a combat unit whose cufftitles were worn on their left sleeves.
Excellent points; what you wrote is what I was what my gut told me but I hadn’t been able to articulate it. I think you are pretty much spot on.
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