Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
4 comments
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more