Making the leap back to July 15, 1944

It's a few days later and I'm still in the midst of my father's letters home from WWII.  It's like a puzzle I'm assembling of stories I've heard through the years, now being filled in with actual stories I'm reading.  And it's like the Swedish I could never be bothered to learn from my Dad, I'm sure he would have said more about his experiences over there if I had only asked more questions.  So the spreadsheet has been started and I think I might be half done with this part of the project of putting together those years and memories.

(Helicopters are overhead again just now!  They just said on the Duluth news that they are testing some new feature on them.  But the ones they show on the news look different than the ones overhead. So I'm still not convinced... )

Included in one letter home was a section of the July 15, 1944 issue of The Stars and Stripes, the newspaper published for military people and any other interested readers.  My Dad sent it because there was an article in it about a battle his unit had recently fought in near Castellina on the Italian front in Northern Italy.  The battle against the Germans was a house-to-house, street-by-street swipe through town to rout out "Jerry."  My Dad wasn't with his unit for that because he was still in the hospital in Naples after being shot on May 29th, my mother's birthday!  And the article is pretty graphic and it's pretty eye-opening and mind-blowing for me to imagine my peaceful father being in on stuff like that.  But, as they say, so is war.

So, give me a newspaper and I'm going to be reading...and I'm finding some more uplifting tidbits to share, so here we go.  Most of these are taken from "Flashes From the Italian Front Lines:"

The key place name to notice in the above article is Pisa which is in Northern Italy.  Zoom in and see...

The article below concerns an artilleryman finding some German Bock beer, once only available in the spring, in a German protective dugout that had been abandoned when they retreated.  Takes me back to the dark beer fests held during Lent down in Bavaria in Southern Germany when we were stationed there.  I've been a "dunkles" fan every since!

And another past time I picked up when I was in the Army was pinball machines, the old school pinball machines, not video ones! Tilt!  This article concerns a "sucker for a pinball machine" who found one in a vacated building, tried playing it, and that's what may have saved his life.  Read and see.  

I also found a Bill Mauldin cartoon and I'm including it here.  (Am I violating copyright, MaryM?) I think he became famous for his "Willie & Joe" cartoons during WWII, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize.  I'm not sure I even "get" this one but I think he's telling the other guy to act tough!

From The Stars and Stripes, July 15, 1944

This below came from the above Wikipedia link, but mentions Monte Cassino, another Italian battle my Dad fought in before he got shot. 

Mauldin's cartoons made him a hero to the common soldier. GIs often credited him with helping them to get through the rigors of the war. His credibility with the common soldier increased in September 1943, when he was wounded in the shoulder by a German mortar while visiting a machine gun crew near Monte Cassino. By the end of the war he also received the Army's Legion of Merit for his cartoons. Mauldin wanted Willie and Joe to be killed on the last day of combat, but Stars and Stripes dissuaded him.

And finally, what's an Army gathering, or USO, or Red Cross without doughnuts?!!