January 29th Journal Entry and Cliff Hope

Jan 29 Control to St. Vith. Cats & Dynamite clearing debris of RR underpass.

Oudler not too badly hit. Aldrigen & Maldringen bad. Stand in old school house & look at sky.

Marilu: If you recall, the old school house was where they stayed for sometime, their spot being a kitchen in an upper floor.

Cliff Hope
The next day brought us back through St. Vith. We had last seen it on 17 December while it was intact and still the headquarters for the 106th division. "Saw St. Vith from the top of an embankment--the most destroyed sight I've ever seen," I wrote in my diary. The railroad bridge had been blown up, the track sagging but still hanging together. Engineers were blowing up debris; a bulldozer was hung up on the rubble. It was cold as blue blazes and we stayed out most of the day, although we put in only one station. In doing so we found several of our old stations beneath the snow. We ate partially warmed C-rations. Bliesmer and I were called to Survey Information Center around 9:30 that night to computer four stations.

The mail brought tobacco, two books, film and my sister's Baby Brownie camera. Although I didn't appreciate it much at the time, the camera was really a boon. I was able to take eight rolls of photos by May. Developed after V-E Day, they provided a photographic record of our experiences from late January on, and I was able to give prints to the GIs in our outfit and to other friends.

A symphony of screaming meemies accompanied our surveying from St. Vith two or three miles along the Schonberg road. We went almost to the roadblock and the place where we were surveying on that memorable 16 December several weeks back. "I think I get colder every day when we go out," I noted in my diary. We drove through St. Vith; the center of town was unrecognizable. Throughout the month, the daily log of the January after action report commented on the slow but steady advance of the VIII Corps. It also mentioned various shellings by artillery and mortars and named those who were wounded as a result. Probably the most spectacular, but fortunate, such event occurred on 30 January, when a dud shell landed about six feet from Bob Mason. He was not injured.

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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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