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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”
BTW you may want to read the third line of your comment and compare it to the fifth line. I agree that what is right is right. Although he was the best president in many years Clinton should have been impeached.
Technically, I believe, he was impeached. But he was not found guilty. Doesn’t the House [GOP then] impeach, and then the Senate try. Website?
Yep:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_States
Note that it can be for groping before taking office.
Peace?
emb, I knew that, but like most people I just say “impeach” to refer to actually throwing them out of office. Thanks for pointing that out though.
Jerry, so, which “conservative” president was in charge when “Ships full of European Jews were not allowed to land in this country during WWII and we read about it and shake our heads.”
“It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.” – Mark Twain
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37957088
Jackie: https://www.abmc.gov/node/548182#.WCancS0rK1s
Thanks Mark. My father was of course awarded the Purple Heart as well as the Air Medal. I have always been proud of his service. I cry at parades, marches, the American flag, air shows and any semblance of patriotic exhibitions.
The first time the shuttle landed in Houston I cried as she came into Ellington.
When she exploded with a crew of my friends and customers I just kept on crying as I designed their flowers. I never got to design flowers for my father’s grave but every military funeral I did as though it was his. In a way it was.
Yes, Jerry, I noted my 3rd and 5th lines. Clinton had some leadership abilities, no doubt, although I think we might differ as to the direction of said leadership at various times.
Let me say this peacefully: Your posting of 1:04 this morning specifically denigrated the Republican presidents of the past 45 years; no such mention of any Democratic presidents’ shortcomings was made. That is why I think this was political rather than patriotic.
I believe I will leave now until we Villagers get back on subject…almost anything but politics. Have a good month.
Debbe 😉 Doc Brown was kind enough to let me stay in his home while I was in 1955, which was very fortunate, as trying to pay for food and lodgings with Series 2013 $20 bills with over-sized pictures of Andy Jackson that looked cut from an old encyclopedia would have undoubtedly have gotten the Secret Service called on me. (I’m not sure who they would have called had I showed them a debit card.)
A couple of times, I had to use Doc’s convertible to go pick up parts for him. Believe me, I drove very carefully, as I didn’t want to have to explain to a traffic cop why my driver’s license was plastic, had my photo on it, and was supposedly valid for 65 years. Anyway, on one trip I heard this song on the car’s radio and didn’t recall ever hearing it, so I made a note to look it up if/when I got back to the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVItMNDFiHE
Man, you are good Ghost, really good. I said no way was thar song from 1955, I was sure it was later around 1959.and you couldn’t have heard it then, proof-you weren’t there at all. Wish I had met you that year, those were my Lolita years when the white shorts and black tee photo was taken. You’d have liked me but what would I have thought of you? You would have been another older man intrigued by the too old to be thirteen woman child.
Here’s a song I truly loved and still love. If I could I’d go back to this time and live it again but so differently. Wish we got do overs in life.
https://youtu.be/Id_UYLPSn6U
Good night if anyone is out there.
GR6
In 1955 credit cards were made of metal (or cardboard)
My mother has one for Macy’s & another Dept. Store. (Bloomingdale’s?)
About a little less than 1/2 the size of current cards – as I recall.
Diners Club Feb 1950 the first independent general purpose CC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_International
But they were not a universally accepted method of payment.
Remember the adds during the Olympics?
Here you are our Ghost who walks through time and walls. If I could turn back time.
https://youtu.be/AldUzWWq8iQ
GM Debbe
FDR, who was widely denounced as a leftist socialist and is today accused of arranging Pearl Harbor. There are things that can be said of every president. We just usually don’t do it while they are still in office. There have been some exceptions which I was mentioning. Have a good life.
(Clinton was elected in 1992 and 1996. He was impeached in 1998, well after his re-election. He was NOT re-elected despite his impeachment.)
Good morning Villagers…..
GM Old Bear. Love your ‘cat’ house, all that furry heat keeps ’em warm.
Glad to see your return GR 😉
I come here seeking solitude and comfort. Please let’s make peace. I am depressed enough the way it is.
Jackie, how in the world did Hal change your last name….why I can’t even pronounce it.
Too cold to go in and knock chicken poop off. Will be warmer tomorrow.
Made chili yesterday using ground turkey….dang good stuff.
Going to do some house cleaning today….maybe 🙂
I love this Village
….Jerry, please come back…I’ll miss your little quips, and how is Tippy
GR 😉 something a little different and and young Cher at that….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVP-_vK0S10
without comment…..
http://cheezburger.com/8986610432
Jimmy, that’s quite an impressive group of accomplishments for a young man. It is interesting to imagine your father carrying all that experience upon return to a peaceful life, while knowing how much he’d done and endured to make the return and the peace possible. I recall the strips that touched on WWII as some of your very best.
What I’ve read about war is that you can go back to normal life, but you can never really talk about war with anyone who hasn’t also experienced it.
I well remember that video of Cher performing on the battleship, Jackie. Or, perhaps more accurately, I remember the costume she wore in it. I never had a Lolita complex but I’ll bet you were worth a second look in 1955. As you would be now, too, of course 🙂
Debbe 😉 I’m happy you decided to start drawing your SS payments, and I hope it will help improve your financial security. (It certainly won’t make you rich, though.) Some will insist you should have waited, so you could draw more per month, but this way you will draw it for more months. Hang in there, hon. (Glad you mentioned making chili. As per previous discussions here, I think today will be an excellent one to dig out one of my slow-cookers and my recipe collection, and make something yummy for dinner. Now to decide what to cook.)
Sideburns, I was saddened to hear of Gully’s passing. I remember your story about the origin of his name.
My contribution to the Cher Video Songbook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLTETaWswCY
emb, first frost for me last night. Got up to crunchy grass.
Dale and Ken from Framingham, good posts.
My father-in-law was in the thickest of the fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. Because he was the company clerk, the only weapon he said that he had was his typewriter. I don’t know how he survived. He never talked about what he saw during the fighting.
My dad was not in combat because we dropped the bombs while he was on Okinawa with the Army Corps of Engineers, preparing to be part of the invasion force. Instead, he became part of the occupational force in and around Nagasaki. He never talked about the absolute devastation and the walking dead that he saw.