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As part of the First Army’s 3rd Armored Division, my father and his buddies in the 23rd Armored Engineering Battalion bridge the River Seine in France in the summer of 1944, near where Orly International Airport is today. Soldiers of the 23rd went on to bridge the Marne River east of Paris, the Meuse in Belgium and the Rhine in Germany, among others. They fought for weeks in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest, the single longest battle in U.S. Army history. During one of the coldest winters in local memory, the combat engineers fought in the Battle of the Bulge as armored infantry. They dynamited holes in the Siegfried Line, Germany’s western wall of defense, and removed thousands of mines. The 3rd Armored Division overran the German towns of Paderborn and Nordhausen, capturing the V-2 rockets manufactured there and preserving the technology for America. They also discovered and freed a nearby concentration camp where inmate slaves were being worked to death in the underground rocket plants. In the spring of 1945, the 3rd Armored Division, the “Spearhead Division,” was deep in Germany and about to meet Soviet troops coming from the east. My father and his buddies were preparing to bridge the Mulde River when they were ordered to stand down. The war had ended. My father survived this experience and came home in the fall of that year. He did not tell me these things. I learned them through my own research, much of it conducted after his death in 1992. And I wonder, how does someone walk away from something like that and go back to a normal life. I guess I should know, he never really did.
174 responses to “My Daddy”
Finally eating brunch. Big bowl of mixed fresh fruit drizzled with warmed organic raw honey with a whole grain oat English muffin with extra protein (that’s what package said) with natural honey butter.
Of course, show me 22% butter fat all natural ice cream and I am a goner. Why I never buy Ben and Jerry’s. Just give me a spoon for the carton.
Dropped the seven pounds of retained fluid over weekend so situation not so bad.
Did the revolution arrive while I was doing laundry and taking dogs and cats to vets? We have an enormous fat skunk living at neighbors and eating at Kitty Buffet. I am vaccinating everything before I have surgery.
Little Ghost has become everyone’s favorite. Trula adores him, he is so adorable. The baby was playing with him this afternoon. He came with a virus and it has recurred, so he went to vets too.
First work, then Dad’s Family Taxi Service. Finally home.
Thunder’s paws with my phone for comparison – my fuzzy radiator treads with big paws.
https://scontent.ford1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/fr/cp0/e15/q65/15025175_10157890499495454_7235898569018407395_o.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoibCJ9
Love your cats Mindy. You definitely practice cat-astropic therapy all the time. I told my vet how I was countering hateful and depressing posts with endless cat photos and cat anecdotes, suggesting everyone pet their cats and adopt some if they were cat less.
He has known me for 22 years and spayed and neutered at least 100 animals for me, he knows I am serious but he laughed his head off at that. He says he would go travel with me if he didn’t have four kids in college and a wife who’d divorce him.
Anyway pet a cat everyone. It lowers blood pressure.
Debbe 😉 On Tuesday, I watched The Red Skelton Show with Doc. Red’s guests included Connie Russell, a dishy, leggy, and shapely singer/actress; and Jamie Farr, who would later show up on something called M*A*S*H. The main sketch had Red playing Cookie the Sailor, and as always, he was funny, funny, funny.
After the show, we launched Operation Back to the Future. I can’t say too much about it, as some of the statutes of limitations may not have run even now, but it involved a suitcase version of Doc’s flux capacitor; “borrowing” a Checker Cab; a quick trip to the Hanford Reactor Site; and sneaking on site to charge a new battery Doc had built, with Doc playing the part of a scatter-brained taxi driver, if one can imagine that.
On the way, I heard this song while driving on an Oregon back road in the middle of the night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJcGi4-n_Yw
Now, I’ll be gone a while. I need to take the cab to 1985 to have a few words with myself.
Ask your parents about anything you can think of. Tell your kids
the same.
.
Almost every day there is something I want to ask Mom Or Dad
certainly every week. Some esoteric, some family, some feelings (though Mom
usually said what she was thinking)
Talking will bring memories and other discussions. Use a recorder and don’t spend
too much time at any one so they get bored or tired.
Go over pictures and get names!
.
Debbe
You are a child – 5 cents each 6 for a quarter (“Put another nickle in the Nickelodeon”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gUNZAmFfKA
GR6
Just got my Duluth Trading Co Catalog
Just for Ghost
http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/product/dirt-simply-great-beard-oil-29409.aspx?p_redirect=1&p_keyword=29409&p_utk=&p_search_sid=&gndr=&processor=content
And 3 other fine aromas
Don’t think this will work but it is item
36212
-brick-buck-naked-36212.aspx?p_redirect=1&p_keyword=36212&p_utk=&p_search_sid=&gndr=&processor=content
The other soaps are
Smells like Naval Supremacy
Smells like Productivity
Smells like Victory
Smells like Accomplishment
One you need for your ready kit
Fire Lighting Kit # 35243
lightning-kit-35243.aspx?p_redirect=1&p_keyword=35243&p_utk=35243&p_search_sid=&gndr=&processor=content
Jackie
For Dickens
http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/product/seat-protector-scouts-seat-saver-32006.aspx?p_redirect=1&p_keyword=32006&p_utk=32006&p_search_sid=&gndr=&processor=content
No harness is a good substitution
Good news. Colorado has legalized the recreational use of marijuana and assisted suicide. We don’t have to move to Canada.
I did enjoy my three days in Canada recently. I was wearing my St. Louis Blues jacket and several people commented on it. I told them that I was actually from Florida although we actually have pro hockey there which, I said, is kind of like playing football in Canada. They laughed politely. Nice folks.
Ok, Ghost I take it you are lost in the 50s when you were born and moving to 80s when you were an adult. Tell us, can you actually go home again or just look homeward, angel?
Ea
Jerry I have begun dreaming about my mother. The dreams are not dreams of reality but of an alternative life and place. Like that TV show Lost. Makes no more sense than it did. Decaying houses are always in dreams.
Good morning Villagers…
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry…..so glad you are still here..your quips make me laugh. Colorado had already legalized weed, but not CA…which surprised me, I would have thought they would have been one of the first ones to legalize it.
Only stayed about an hour at the hen house…cold in there. The Boss told Ian he wanted to speak to us….Ian said he’d go in and help today. He’s whining about the two of us just working out in the hen house….asked him if he wanted to eat 🙂
GM, Old Bear. I am a child at heart, but in a 63 year old body. A nickel???
Jackie, here’s that link I promised you….love the chemistry between these two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEJpb4VzbDg
Jackie….I think Freud would have a field day analyzing your dreams. I don’t recall mine, but there are times too I dream about Mom, and theymake no sense and about 15 minutes later I don’t recall the details, just that I dreamed about her.
And Ian gets a gold star…..his room is cleaned, and all laundry done and put away!!!!!!
later…..
Hey, Sandcastler, how’s Toronto?
GR 😉 just love your reading about your travels and the adventures you are having. Yesterday, as I was channel surfing I came upon an infomercial on Red Skelton. I watched him every week as a young girl…sure don’t make clowns like him anymore. Did you know he was from Vincennes, IN? We Hoosiers take pride in that…
…I once had one of these 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul041CSNJto
🙂 http://cheezburger.com/8985713152
for Jerry…
http://cheezburger.com/8988670720
Ghost, now you’ve got me thinking of Gertrude and Heathclliff…and Guzzler’s Gin. “Smooth!”
Smigz….and let’s not forget Clem Kadiddlehopper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNNqiWtEIxI
One would think that in this day of tech and high speed computers, the Social Security would be a little speedier than 30 days…..
Mark…remember this one? It’s where I’m stuck at now 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdXjm8pZMws
God bless us every one. God bless the USA.
About the SS and computers. Did you know the VA system and SS have 30 old computer systems and only add on the new things every 10 years or so. Not a very efficient way to go about business.
When I was in gubmint we had no computers and no calculators. They issued us yellow lead pencils and yellow legal pads and we wrote and calculated with that.
I had a secretary who took dictation as well as typed but because I was a woman they loaned her out all the time as it was assumed I could type if I just would.. I wouldn’t.
Our typing pool was all male except for one loan woman.