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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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

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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

January 12th Battalion History

Battalion History: We'll remember of the overall picture, the general German withdrawal toward Houffalize to escape an allied trap, the enemy counterattack which regained Noville and Foy, the American attack which retook Noville, the original objective of the corps in this area. Houffalize was taken by First Army troops and Corps' new objective became Limerle. The Germans began to withdraw toward the Siegried Line. Limerle and Echo were taken. The First Army retook St. Vith. VIII Corps troops pushed on through Trois Vierges, Luxembourg, went on to take Burg Rowland, and reached the Our River on a braod front. Bridgeheads over the Our were established and enlarged. Winterscheid and Sehonberg fell to corps troops. Poor weather made sound and flash ranging results almost negligible. And the buck privates who didn't want to go to war in the first place wondered if spring would ever come. The folks back home complained about meat shortages and said, "They say all the m

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

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