Journal Entry Jan 4- Letting off Steam

Jan 4 Traverse up Hwy N-15 to Bastogne-Town shot to pieces. Shells still landing at intervals-Civilian came by carrying mortar dud-German prisoners working in wreckage-

G. S. tried to tell me I forgot to write down an angle so I blew my top.

Hope brought the record player over to our place in Wiedmont station. Listened to records and danced with Cristine till 11:00 Darn cute gal & dances as well as any I've ever danced with.

Cliff Hope: My diary entries for the next several days contain a curious mixture of reports about Bastogne and its environs, the snow and bitter cold, and, of course, Christine. On the third day of the year, survey started out in the morning but dense fog turned us back before we had gone more than a block. "Spent the day doing nothing--what a heavenly feeling, " I told my diary. I also spent a lot of time with Christine and her aunt and uncle.

At midnight I stood guard for an hour out in the cold, a strong wind driving the falling snow. In a heavy snowfall the next day, we surveyed from previous stations into Bastogne, I carried an umbrella for Peltz, who was operating the transit. Bastogne was pretty well wrecked. About half the buildings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. It was extra sad to see a town, which you once saw intact, in ruins.

The day's chores and the devastation of war were forgotten that night as Christine and I danced to the music of our section's record player. She was quite a good dancer but my feet were so frozen they seemed like two stumps. As I wrote in my diary, "I had a helluva time dancing."

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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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