How about a wee sidestep into some musings, Hmmm ...

I have a little note pad sitting beside my computer with a bunch of blog entry topics listed and I've been on a roll lately with getting caught up and checking off some of those items. So as I write this entry, I know some of you will note the deviation from my usual fare and see that I have wandered into the land of musings.  Sorry, my muse is making me do this.

My wife and I took a walk at a local park today and we sat on a swing about 15 feet off the walking path.It was a beautiful afternoon and there were lots of people out walking their dogs, riding their bikes and skateboards, and just waking, enjoying the day.  So as these people would walk by us, we would usually say "hello" or offer some other sort of greeting. You know what -- I actually started to count how many people walked by and in a little over an hour, there were about 137 people passing in front of us. Only about 12 of those people responded to our greeting !! We didn't invade their space, we didn't even get off the swing. Most just walked past, not even looking up or at us.  Strangely, of the 12 who did respond in some fashion, they were all our age (old in case you were wondering). 

So I have a suggestion for our politicians (just in case they need an idea about future government spending which has to be better than the junk they came up with recently -- really).  How about a Covid recovery program that reintroduces people to civility and pleasantness.  It could be a correspondence course if people don't want to gather in order to learn or re-learn these characteristics, but  there is plenty of room in the park we were in today -- great place to start.  If not, I really fear for my grandchildren and the world they live in. I'm afraid there are a whole lot of people in this world who will never take off their masks and smile again.

And then there is this little thing my friend Al sent me today (thanks for the chuckle, Al)...

Here are 12 things to consider as we get closer to closing the door on one of the most horrible years of our lifetime:

1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.

2. I was so bored I called Jake from State Farm just to talk to someone. He asked me what I was wearing.

3. 2019: Stay away from negative people. 2020: Stay away from positive people.

4. The world has turned upside down. Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!

5. This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came into my house & told my dog. We laughed a lot.

6. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.

7. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?

8. This virus has done what no woman has been able to do. Cancel sports, shut down all bars & keep men at home!

9. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!

10. I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator.

11. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip to the Backyard. I’m getting tired of the Living Room.

12. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask & ask for money. 

 

And finally, for my son --

You're not really talking to yourself, you're having a parent-teacher conference. 

Hooah 

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 9 -- (The Eagle's Nest) ...

Have you heard the song that has this line, "I'm sittin' on top of the world"?  Well, that is how we were to finish our tour -- visiting the Eagle's Nest, located on top of the Bavarian Alps.  This was Hitler's birthday present from Hermann Göring.  Built high in the Bavarian Alps, it was not one of Hitler's favorite places.

After Adolf Hitler took his own life on April 30, 1945, and Soviet forces captured Berlin on May 2, only one prize remained for the Allies: Berchtesgaden, the town near Adolf Hitler's mountaintop retreat, the Obersalzberg (Eagle's Nest), where many of the highest-ranking Nazi leaders had homes.

It was visited on 14 documented instances by Adolf Hitler, who disliked the location due to his fear of heights, the risk of bad weather, and the thin mountain air. Today it is open seasonally as a restaurant, beer garden, and tourist site.

In the HBO series, Band of Brothers, viewers get a good look at the site.  But, until one visits it personally, the actual height in the alps, the road and path up to it, the tunnels, all the underground support systems, the anti-aircraft guns built into the side of the mountain go unseen.  What a place.  I have included links to my pictures, and links to other sources of information, but again, these don't fully give you a full  appreciation for this place.

 

This little path led from the building to a cross shown below.  In order to get up to it, one had to walk up a pretty steep path that dropped off on both sides.  Get too careless and you might not stop until you got to the bottom of the mountain. The view from here was spectacular.

The flower on this cross is the edelweiss.  It was a sign of manhood, the soldier had to climb up to where the edelweiss grows and pick his flower to prove he had made the accent. Also it was the badge of the Alpine troops.

This is the meeting room.  Now it is used as a dining room for larger groups.  All of the windows overlook the mountains.  Very little of this room has changed from the time it was built.

This fireplace was a gift from Benito Mussolini to Hitler for his birthday. If you click on the picture and enlarge it, you can see inside a cast firebox with pictures sculpted into it.

One of the highlights was having lunch on the terrace which overlooked the mountains and valleys.

What a way to end our trip.  The next morning at 0300 hours, I would fly out of Germany and back to the US.  What a long flight.  But I finally arrived in Columbus, via a lay-over in Boston and met my wife at the airport.  I was really hungry that morning (0230 the next morning) after meeting them, and we stopped at a Wendy's (only thing in Columbus that was open). Imagine, eating at the Eagle's Nest overlooking the Bavarian Alps on one day, and at a Wendy's the next. Hmmmmm.

My pictures of the Eagle's Nest

Other pictures of the Eagle's Nest (Shutterstock) 

Background to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by Rick Steves

Easy Company Soldiers sitting on the patio at the Eagle's Nest.

"In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?'
No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.” (Dick Winters)

Hooah

Wreaths Across America at Raleigh

Back in Ohio I participated in the Wreaths Across America program in Sidney for about 5 years.  We placed about 700 wreaths or so each year after the first one, and we involved the whole community.  This year, after moving to North Carolina, I still wanted to participate but had to find out how it was going to be done.  

The local American Legion which I joined planned to assist the group that was in charge of the Raleigh National Cemetery.  There are 5,000 +/- Veterans' markers at this cemetery, and they had two large semis packed full of boxes of wreaths.  I estimated there were about 250-260 people there to help, including a whole bunch of scouts and their leaders.  This being the covid year and all, there was no ceremony (although they could have had one since the cemetery was really wide open).  But, all in all, it was a great day -- sunny and cool.  With approximately 5,000 graves, I didn't know how long this would take, but it was completed in about an hour once we got started placing wreaths.It's different because all of the grave markers are in straight rows and everyone there pretty much is a Veteran, so it went smoothly and quickly. It was almost like doing the placements at Arlington.

I will certainly participate again next year.

Some people dream the dream, Some people live the dream, Some people defend the dream, God bless the defenders. (Anon.)

Hooah

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 8 -- (Munich - Birthplace of Nazism) ...

On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. This attempted coup d'état came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. They began at the Bürgerbräu Keller, a beer hall in the Bavarian city of Munich. This was the next-to-last stop on our tour...Munich.

This medieval town was absolutely stunning.  Although much of it was obliterated during the war by allied bombers, it was rebuilt and looks like it did during those days.

 

 

It is unbelievable that this is the rebuilt city.  During the tour, we were able to have lunch at the beer hall where that all began.What a beautiful place.  The multiple floors, beautiful woodwork and paintings on the ceilings.   Munich, Bavaria’s capital, is home to centuries-old buildings and numerous museums. The city is known for its annual Oktoberfest celebration and its beer halls, including the famed Hofbräuhaus, founded in 1589. In the Altstadt (Old Town), central Marienplatz square contains landmarks such as Neo-Gothic Neues Rathaus (town hall), with a popular glockenspiel show that chimes and reenacts stories from the 16th century.

 

Wikapedia photo

Britannica photo of just one of the dining areas of the Hofbrauhaus during the Octoberfest.

 

This sculpture is the grave site of their "unknown Soldier." It is located directly across from the state capitol.(See the link below for more of my pictures).

This was one of the churches in the town.  If you click on the picture and enlarge it a bit, you will see at the top a golden triangle with an eye in the middle and rays emanating from it. Sound familiar -- well, just look on the back of the one dollar bill.  Hmmmmm ...

Finally, we were in the center of the old town area, and I spotted a couple of old brooms in a corner and thought I would strike a Harry Potter pose.  I think it looks pretty good.

Munich photos 

"Of one thing there is no doubt: if Paris makes demands of the heart, then Munich makes demands of the stomach."  (Rachel Johnson)

Hooah

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 7 -- (Dachau) ...

It's day 7 of our tour and we are now at the Concentration Camp known as Dachau. So far on our trip, the weather has been beautiful so it seems only fitting that when we walk up to the camp entrance it starts to rain and it rained, and it rained and the clouds rolled in, and it rained some more.

During my career in the Army, I had one job -- establish and run enemy prisoner of war camps.   I would suspect that a very minuscule percent of the American public, or even the military community for that matter, knows  what is involved in operating an EPW camp. Our main job was to secure these EPWs, and in order to do that we had assigned to us everything that a modern US city would also have -- medical assets, doctors, dentists, nurses, hospital facilities, electricians, engineers, carpenters, sanitation experts, firemen and their assets, security units, etc., and tons of equipment. We adhered to the mandates of the Geneva Convention so other than confinement, their life wasn't too bad (relatively speaking).  I Know what we do in camps, and having done lots of research on concentration camps, I wanted to see a camp first hand.

When the tour company published its itinerary for our trip, I was very much looking forward to seeing this camp as Dachau was the first of the concentration camps and was not originally set up as an extermination camp.  Rather, it was to be a labor camp.  The original occupants were not exclusively Jews, rather this was set up for enemies of the Nazi system. They were here to work, and work would "set them free." 

When a group I headed up (Vets to DC) was taking Veterans to Washington to see their memorials, one of our Veterans was a Soldier in Third Army and his infantry unit was one of the units to liberate this camp.  I got to talk to him about this during the trip and certainly learned some things. 

The town council of the town outside the camp really didn't want this camp to be such a landmark, so they decreed that the camp should be torn down, a way to erase this horror.  Fortunately they were stopped before the camp was entirely dismantled.

This was a sculpture done to represent the bodies caught up in the wire fencing around the camp.  The bodies were left there to discourage others from trying to escape.

This picture shows hooks/rings that had ropes running through them and big hooks on one end.  The Germans would hang bodies on the hooks while others were fed into the ovens.

This picture is inside the "reception/shower" area and is one of the drains from a shower area.

This picture of two of the remaining ovens used in this camp are right where they stood while being used in the camp, and the

Below are some links --  to all of the pictures I took while there, and to some sites that will give you a better idea of what this camp was.There are some ads in the YouTube sites so you will have to click through them. I also have to apologize for not being as attentive as I should have been to taking more pictures, but while walking around this place, the atmosphere just beats you down and sucked all of the enthusiasm I had built up during the trip right out of me. I constantly found myself comparing the two systems of EPW camps, ours and Hitler's. Sure had lots of worrisome nights after this...obviously not as bad as those Soldiers who liberated this place, and not as bad as those Soldiers who liberated the extermination camps.

Dachau (my pictures)

Dachau (History Channel)

Dachau (Youtube)

“My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.”  (Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn)

Hooah

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 6 -- (On the Road, Cemetery at Luxembourg) ...

This was the stop we made at the American Cemetery at Luxembourg.  This particular picture is rather unique because this shows the grave of General George Patton and there is an interesting story behind it.  It seems that Patton wanted to be buried with his troops, so his final resting place was out amongst the other Soldiers.  Well, over the years, his grave site was so popular that there was a path worn into the grass along with a rut, and the area became rather a mess, detracting from the solemnity of the area.  So the commission overseeing the site decided to move him to his present spot, where they put the paving stones and small chain in front.

This site is really unique in its design.  There are huge map sculptures of the war movements and there is a small chapel there, something I didn't see at the other cemeteries we visited.

Here are some links that will show you some more details of this cemetery:

Luxembourg American Cemetery 

Luxembourg Am. Cemetery (Youtube) 

I also wanted to include some other American Cemeteries just to give you an idea of what sacrifices were made and what that sacrifice looks like:

Henri Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial (Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial is a Second World War American military war grave cemetery in eastern Belgium, located 3 km northwest of Henri-Chapelle, about 30 km east of Liège.

Lorraine American Cemetery 

Tribute to our Fallen Allied Heroes (There is an ad at the beginning of this one you can click through)

American Cemeteries Overseas (You may have to click over a couple of ads at the beginning of this Youtube clip)

I hope this entry gives you an idea of what was done for us by these service members. I don't mean to overlook all those who fought in World War II and returned home. I will address that in other entries, but there are two sites that pay homage to them: The WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the WWII Museum located in New Orleans, LA.

WWII Memorial, Washington, D.C.

WWII Museum in New Orleans 

And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me (Lee Greenwood)

 Hooah

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 4,5 -- (Bastogne -- the Woods) ...

There were several goals when I decided to take this trip: see the Normandy Beaches and walk in the ocean where American troops came ashore; see the town of Bastogne, walk the woods where the Battle of the Bulge took place, and overlook the town of Foy just as the men of Easy Company did so many years ago; see the Concentration Camp at Dachau; visit the birthplace of Nazism - the town of Munich; and then visit the Eagles' Nest and take in that building and the magnificent view of the Bavarian Alps.

So I have briefly written about the town of Bastogne and there is so much more to be said. I have read book after book on the trials and struggles that took place there, so when I actually visited it it was overwhelming.  Unfortunately, our time there was short and we didn't have enough time to really "get into" the town and uncover its stories.  I would love to return some day to spend more time there.  I would pick several more places to include (the cemeteries, more areas of the Normandy beaches, more of the Brecourt Manor area, and the 82d ABN. operations at Sainte-Mere-Eglise) and would set up my own time schedule.  But that was not the case this time. This tour did its job, though, and whetted my appetite.

So, now on to the Ardennes Forest, and speciffically the Bois Jacques woods, just a few kilometers to the  north of Bastogne.  When you look at these pictures, you havce to remember these trees are not the ones that were there during the battle.  All of those were destroyed.  These that you see have either regrown or been replanted.  Our group got there just a short while before dark, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  I have spent a great deal of time in thick pine forests during my Army years, and I can tell you that at night, it is literally impossible to see your hand in front of your face.  Even the light of a full moon doesn't penetrate these canopies. As we walked the area, there were lots of broken branches on the sides of trees, and they had very sharp, pointed ends on them.  I'm sure there were quite a few injuries from tree limb jabs during the Soldiers stay there.

In the next few pictures, you can see the remains of some of the foxholes that were dug in this woods.  Some of them are pretty shallow as the dirt and Mother Nature  (and tourists) have filled them in.  I'm not sure if these sites were used in the making of the HBO mini-series, "Band of Brothers" or not. I actually got down into the foxhole shown below and looked down toward the Town of Foy, trying to get the feel of what those guys were looking at, were feeling.  Of course, it obviously wasn't cold out and there weren't people shooting at me.
These pictures below were just some of the other foxholes throughout the area.  The one picture with all of the little crosses was rather interesting.  There were so many of them, I don't know if this was a group that placed them there, or it it is supposed to represent maybe the number of men killed and/or wounded here.  I may have to try to look up some figures on this.                                                                                                                                                                       There were all different sizes of foxholes, but I'm sure that those guys weren't real thrilled with the size of any of them during those artillery barrages.  I remember the feeling of some mortars in the desert and the sound of a few incoming (but far enough away) and outgoing artillery rounds, but none of them were right on top of me.  My dad was in the Army artillery and he said of the shrapnel didn't kill you, the concussion would.  

  These two pictures were taken from the edge of the line, overlooking the town of Foy.  It is hard to see the buildings in the town where the Germans were holding the intersection of two roads, but the pictures below will show them to you.  I wish I had taken my field glasses (binoculars)  so I could have gotten a more authentic look at the town.                                                                                                                                            In these two pictures, you can still see some of the bullet holes around the windows.  This is really similar  to the bullet holes we saw when we were on a "Battle Book" trip to Italy and were near the town of Pisa.  We came up along a street by a river and there were houses pretty much right on the street, no sidewalks.  There were also basement windows around the foundation and each of the windows were still pock marked with bullet holes.  After seeing all those battle scars, the fury of battles really jumps out at you.

 

 

 

I know these pictures don't portray much at this epic battle, but maybe some of the links below will give you a better idea of what I saw.  The tour company, Beyond the Band of Brothers, laid this segment out very well, and we had a local docent who was steeped in the history of this area and very professionally took us through the town of Bastogne, the HQ of the 101st, and the Bois Jacques area, including the area in the town of Foy. If you are interested in this segment of military history and would like to get a small, introductory view of the battles and areas, I highly recomment this trip (once this Covid crap passes).  

 

 Here are a couple of links to more info on this area: US Army info on Battle

and Bois Jacques and the Ardennes Forest between Bastogne and Foy .

Here is a link to the Bastogne War Museum pictures I took:Bastogne War Museum Pictures

Here is a link to the pictures I took at the 101st ABN HQ during the Battle:  101st HQ during Battle (recreated at the actual location)

 
Now it is on to another American Cemetery at Luxemburg, and then off to Dachau, Munich and then to the Eagle's Nest.

YOU CAN MANUFACTURE WEAPONS AND YOU CAN PURCHASE AMMUNITION, BUT YOU CAN'T BUY VALOR AND YOU CAN'T PULL HEROES OFF AN ASSEMBLY LINE.
(Sergeant John B. Ellery, U.S. 1st Infantry Division)

 Hooah 

Another short break ...

A friend of mine posted this to his Facebook account.  I don't know where he got it, but it is funny.

“Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese.”  (Luis Bunuel)

Hooah

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 4,5 -- (Bastogne -- the town) ...

Bastogne seemed like a long bus ride from where we were at Sainte-Mère-Église . Truth in advertising, after looking at a map, it really seems that nowhere in that area of the tour is really that far.  But, then again, I am in a very nice tour bus, watching a movie, not slugging it out on the ground in pitched battles.  Those who were there talk about distances in terms of yards.  Distances were measured in days, not movie lengths.

We finally got there and checked in to the hotel (BTW - if you have not been in a European hotel, you are in for a treat, especially on a hot, humid August night with no air conditioning).  

Even though the town is obviously changed and recovered from the war, the heritage is pretty much every where you look.  There are American tanks and monuments throughout the countryside, sitting in silent testimony to the fight.  They are clean, no graffiti spray painted on them (like we saw on a lot of other things in France on the way to Normandy) and the area is neat and there is no trash blowing around. Several times our guides  told us how the Americans were still held in high esteem here for the efforts and sacrifices of our forefathers.  That is not so much the case in the rest of France. Didn't feel the love.

Our group was pretty much on its own to explore the town of Bastogne.  The pictures will pretty much show you what we saw.  I would have to say Bastogne was quite a town.

The American tank in the center of town is quite a monument to the sacrifices of the soldiers who fought here.  The towns people I talked to (mostly waiters at the restaurants and bars, along with a couple of shopkeepers) really treated us well and went out of their way to talk to us about the battles, monuments and take good care of us in their establishment. BTW, the tank is pointed toward the battlefields.

 

These three pictures were just a few of the "sculptures" in the square.  This was obviously an artisan's hometown.  It was interesting to see all of the different things that were used to make these pieces of art.

  An area that really got our attention was a part of the main street, a bit removed from the square.  As you can see from the picture, they strung up colorful umbrellas for the whole length of this section.  We saw it and wondered what it was, so Keith and I went down there and found several shops and lots of eating establishments.  We went into one, a pizza place, and ordered dinner.  Boy were we surprised.  We each ordered a pizza and when they came out, there were 4 of them.  Seems that their custom is that one person orders for both of the people, and since we both ordered different kinds of pizza, they just assumed we were ordering four of them.  Oh well, we were certainly hungry and the pies weren't that big - kinda like a small or medium in the US. We really had a good time there and some of my old high school and college French came in handy.  The owner of the pizza place said the umbrellas were an attempt to draw tourists down to this part of the village.

 

The streets were really narrow and there was not much room for cars and buses.  With all of the war damage, it was probably hard for military vehicles (tanks especially) to make their way through during the battles.

Below are a couple of short videos that might also help one visualize what the town went through.

  Original Film Footage of Bastogne WWII

 There are several other videos on YouTube that can give you a great deal of background on this town and the battles that took place during the Bulge.  Most/some of them have ads, but you can click out of those and continue on with the video.

"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons." (D. MacArthur)

Hooah

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 4,5 -- (Normandy -- some after thoughts on the way to Bastogne...) ...

It's later in the afternoon and we're boarding the bus for the trip to Bastogne. I had time to review some of the things I was at the beaches of Normandy and different places as we began to work our way inland. So, I came up with some pictures that I forgot I had, but I thought they would be interesting.

This was a display at the museum at Normandy and it showed some of the major unit patches of the units that took part in the invasion.  I am pointing here to the 83d Infantry Division patch which was part of the Omaha force.  The 83d later was re-designated as the 83d ARCOM (ARmy COMmand) and was located in Columbus, OH. When I first enlisted in the Army Reserves, I was a member of the 342d MP Co. (EG) (Zanesville, OH) which was a Military Police Company whose function was serving as Escort Guards (EG) -- we transported enemy prisoners of war from a collection point to an enemy prisoner of war camp, some distance in the rear.

Here I am pointing to the 5th Infantry Division patch (the red triangle).  This was the patch of my old friend, Warren, a WWII veteran, who came to the fight some time after the beach landings. The 5th came ashore at UTAH.

This PW (prisoner of war) beach cage sign was located only a few hundred yards from the beach.

Here is a list of some of the units that supported the fight at the beaches and the move inland.  There are two MP EG units listed -- the 301st and the 595th. The most important thing about this list is that these are company sized  units (110 to 145 troops on average).  When we think of Normandy, we most often think of units that are division sized (101st, 82d, 25th, etc.)(10,000 troops per division).  But to me, it's interesting to see who the "little guys" were that were assigned or attached to and supported those larger groups and what their role was.

 

After leaving the airport in Paris, we would travel through a number of small towns.  It was kinda interesting to see signs like this when we stopped to see some of the towns and sights.  I would often think of troops trying to navigate their way to an objective and coming upon a sign like this, wondering if it was real or planted, if it was pointing the correct way or not. Sure was a lot easier being part of a tour group.

 

We stopped in a little town and visited the church and the town (village?) square.  Right in the niddle of it was a water source which was used by everyone in the village, the Germans when they "owned" the place, and the Americans when it was theirs. The top picture is what it looks like today.  The bottom one is an actual shot of Germans loading up on water.  I seem to remember that there was a plaque on the back side of the spigot area which memorialized some American Soldiers who were killed there taking cover as they fought. 

Again, these were just some after thoughts as I reviewed my notes during the bus trip to Bastogne. Images of what I had seen popped in and out of my head and I wanted to include them.  There was so much and I had to include them before I forgot them (happens a lot as I get older).

“Veterans know better than anyone else the price of freedom, for they’ve suffered the scars of war. We can offer them no better tribute than to protect what they have won for us." (President Ronald Reagan, 1983)

Hooah