Friday, 22 December Cliff Hope

Friday, 22 December

Retreating into France wasn't as dramatic as it sounded. Matton was barely across the border, southwest of Florenville. It was raining when we awoke in Matton. Captain Carter gave us an orientation lecture on all available reports on the situation. The enemy was still unchecked, although the flanks of the line still held firm. St. Vith was still held. Bastogne was cut off. Units of the III Corps under General Patton's third army had started a counteroffensive to reache the isolated units still holding Bastogne. It was still hoped that the 101st Airborne Division there could manage to fight its way out. Three fourths of southern Luxembourg was overrun.

The battalion spent the day taking equipment inventory and preparing lists of shortages. All vehicles were checked and repaired. Out outfit moved at dusk in convoy through Florenville east on the main road to Arlon and then turned off on a side road to Selange, nine kilometers south of Arlon. We arrived around 10 pm and were immediately attached to III Corps of the Third Army. We bedded down on the floor of a bowling alley, next door to a tavern.

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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...

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Welcome to Winsor War Notes, the experiences of Luther Snow Winsor in World War Two. Subscribe to experience the day by day journal entries published on the matching day of the year for the time of his deployment to Europe and the Battle of the Bulge. Entries will include scans of the pages of his handwritten notes made at the time with a transcription and pertinent sections of the history he wrote later using these notes to jog his memories. The idea of this project is to publish and read the entries on the days of the year that they were originally written so we can get a feel for the weather setting and of the passage of time as it passed for him as he had these experiences. I will include relevant photos where possible. I suggest viewing Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan if you want a more graphic sense of what he was experiencing. He said that Saving Private Ryan was very realistic to his memories and Band of Brothers depicts many of the same kinds of things ...

November 4th 1945 Embarkation! Headed Home on the USS Westerly Victory ship

Watch for Lu's binoculars in many of his photos. They might be his best used acquisition from the war. This mimeographed newsletter is an interesting view into the voyage home.

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

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