Skip to main content

September 29th Journal entry continued-Last day of travel to Ardennes



Sept. 29- Convoy 0830 Cloudy windy day-Saw Tiger tank-Montigny, Guise, La Cappelle, ?, Trelon (Belgium Border) Chimay, Petigny, Givet (Back in France) (Briefly-mc) Dinant, Chigny, ? and Bastogne. 

Bivouac area about 3 km out in edge of beautiful spruce forest.

Hope, Bliesmer & Peltz- got kissed in Petigny. 

Marilu: I traced this route in google maps to confirm spellings of the sequential towns. I wasn't able to find all of them, but I could see that when they went through Givet they went through a little outcropping of the French border and out again. Fun to see him referring to the kiss Cliff Hope describes in more detail in his book, quoted in the other entry for this day.




The Tiger Tank was without a doubt the tank which was most feared by the Allied forces during the Second World War. The thing that made this tank so feared and respected was the 88 mm gun, which could destroy a Sherman tank at ranges up to 3600 yards – far beyond the range of the guns mounted on the Allied tanks. An Allied tank had to be well inside the Tiger’s range before it had any chance of destroying it.The Tiger was a formidable tank. It saw action in Russia, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy and north-west Europe (although production was limited to just 1,354 tanks) and it was feared by all Allied tank crews, which gave the Panzer forces a considerable psychological advantage. Even so, it would probably be fair to say that more Tigers were lost to mechanical failure than to combat.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Journal Entry March 27, 28th And Battalion history

March 27 Crashed B-24 March 28 Put in mike base-taped-Jeep broke tape at road intersection. Put in flash OPs. Picked up Helmet, leather. Battalion History: On 28 March, headquarters of the Barnstorming 16th crossed the Rhine, followed the next day by the Letter Batteries. With advancing armor taking the fight out of the Germans, the 16th found itself scouring the woods around Henmethal --- for prisoners, souvenirs and eggs. Souvenirs and eggs were more plentiful than prisoners. From Ray Hight's book:  By the time the 285th crossed the Rhine toward the end of March, much of the area was in American hands and things were moving so quickly we hardly had time to set up. The German forces were pulling back, and there was very little opposition as we crossed the southern part of Germany almost up to the boundary of Czechoslovakia.

Journal Entry March 4th- New jacket and boots

Lu in June wearing field Jacket 1945 issue Combat Boots 1945 issue Field Jacket March 4 Got Laundry. Got ready to move. Red cross girls serve chow. Surveyed in rain. Oh yes, got new field jacket & combat boots.

October 20th, Friday-Movie, steak and fries

10/20/1944- Wrote Wes and Deane and Bud- Saw "Cassanova Brown" with Garry Cooper, Terresa Wright-in St. Vith. Fried Steak and French Fries in evening. Packed to leave on D.S. Cliff Hope from his book: Within the next week we drove to Luxembourg City and back twice. The scenery was beautiful, the terrain honeycombed with small, swift streams. On the second trip, we returned by way of Arlon, Belgium, stopping there for about an hour. Arlon was a clean, small city. The stores resembles those back home. I bought postcards, maps, steaks, three scarves, a buffet piece, and, most important of all, a small dish of ice cream. It was the first ice cream I'd had since Fort Bragg. Along the way we checked out the farm girls of the region. Some of them looked strong as oxen. I saw a girl pulling a four-wheel wagon. They had to be husky. Some of the men sized them up as "13 ax handles wide" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casanova_Brown Cass Brown is about to...