October 12th, Thursday-Sleeping in the Kitchen

Oct 12 Kitchen brought over chow-
Cleaned up filth-
Now 8 of us occupy two top floor rooms-
Bruno, Ludwig, Gunther and I (Heydril) sleep in kitchen-
good stove
Filled mattress

Cliff Hope from his book: After the kitchen brought us breakfast, we went on detail back to the Gotterdammerung to get our stove, the command post tent, and other items left behind. We lunched near the schoolhouse and spent the afternoon getting straw to sleep on. Survey Party Two took the third floor of the school; Okie, Mac' Winsor and I were in what had been a kitchen: and Grathwol, Peltz and Thompson were in an adjoining room. We hung our clothes on the stove at night. Eight men shaved at one table with water heated on the stove. We drank cocoa and ate sardines and fired potatoes. The beds and bed rolls took up most of the floor space. "From the Gotterdammerung to a New York East Side tenement in one day," Grathwol observed.

I had a field day sorting through the library books and pamphlets in the volksschule (Primary school). One book, published in 1941, was entitled Das Amerikanische Ratsel (The American Enigma). The enigma was none other than Preident Roosevelt. A large collection of photographs at the end of the book portrayed everyone with a Jewish name in FDR's administration. I stashed a good bit of the schoolroom literature in the bottom of my duffel bag.

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August 28th 1944 Journal Entry-Rain and Rations

Aug 28th RAIN RAIN and mud Lu from his memoirs: We settled into a routine of extending and improving our control surveys and existing on "K" and "C" rations and sleeping in soggy pup tents. There was lots of rain and mud and finding ways to improve living conditions was a constant challenge. As Cliff pointed out in his book, we had some talented buddies with inventive minds. Tom Fourshes, of Cadiz, Kentucky built a compact, wood fired cooking stove on which we could heat our rations, spread hot cheese on crackers, and boil eggs obtained from farmers. We found straw and dry grass to put under our bed rolls, but we never found a way to keep the water our of our fox holes. We didn't have too much incoming artillery, but I noted on August 26 'Priebe hits fox hole as I leave it going for mine as shells land in river' We also began a close relationship with our Field Artillery gun battalions. The 561st next to us were equipped with "155 Long T...

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. From www.warhistoryonline.com 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 ...

Oct 25th, Wednesday-Journal Entry-Bombs and Guns

Oct 25-Lellig to Matternach- Tied in with Party 1 on R.R.- Lt Jones & G. S. scared out of house by civilian in sports roadster0 In at noon- Transferring notes to correct notebook all afternoon- O1:20 Big Buzz Bomb barely 200 ft. overhead-going south Thundering 400 M.P.H. Machine guns fire but miss. Buzz Bombs going into 1st Army positions Lu from Rae Hight's book : For quite a while, we surveyed the areas back and forth between and through Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg. Though the distances were not great, the continued movement required a certain amount of reorganizing each time. By the end of October we were in the Mompach-Berbourg area of eastern Luxemboug, near the front. It was not long before German shells landed not too far away. Our main reminders that the army was just a few kilometers away were the nightly visits by "Bed Check Charlie," buzz bombs that whizzed overhead each night about midnight. The V-1 flying bomb...

Winsor War Notes-Luther Snow Winsor's WW II experiences

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