Saturday, May 31, 2008
Operation Undertone~Nordwind
If you enlarge this map, note in the upper left quadrant, the pink box with the white cross...that is where Dad's 253rd Infantry was attached for a few weeks to the 44th Infantry Division, under Haislip's XV Corps. Here you can also note, they were being beseiged by the fanatic 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, and a French division was at their backs. It was such an even fight, they stayed in the same place for a week. I'm currently researching an eye-witness account by a German soldier, "Seven Days in January". Fascinating reading. The forward is written by Theodore C. Mataxis, Brigadier General, US Army (Retired).
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
nov. 25, 1945 ... leaving n.y.
Dad and his fellow troops departed the United States for France aboard the SS Sea Robin the day after Thanksgiving, the 25th of November, lead in convoy by the HMS Saturnia, a converted Italian luxury liner captured intact with it’s crew by the British Navy.
Monday, May 12, 2008
master map
Here is the main map I'm working on, the original map is on bottom. This map shows the front-line activity for a four-day period, April 1-April 4, 1945. I think I was able to show this time-frame more clearly on the top map in the shaded red areas near the red borders. An interesting creature appears, as we gobble up the Nazi machine.
If you double-click on the top map you'll be able to make out the white troop movement route that starts from the bottom from Marseilles, France, to the northeast shoulder of France, to the Sarreguemines area and over the border into Germany. My father was captured near Obergriesheim on April 2, in a roadside ambush. His main battles and skirmishes were in the Rhine Crossing, "Nordwind", and the blast through the insanely fortified Siegfrieg Line, with his capture just before the Jagst-Kocher River Engagement, a 9-day battle that began on April 4. As a POW, he was taken through Stuttgart, where they were inadvertently bombed by English bombers, then taken to Augsberg, stashed in a barn and finally liberated by the 45th Infantry Division.
By this time, the Battle of the Bulge was mopping up and you can see that the Rhur pocket is being closed (the "eye" of the beast).
I try to match the color palette I've established for the manuscript. This could be done as a 2-color process thereby making it much less expensive to print. And I like subtle color relationships. So that works out fine. The difficulty lies in correlating all the information I'm getting on troop movement from different sources; I've found errors in official troop Morning Reports that differ in dates and places from personal memoirs of soldiers, etc.
after
before
If you double-click on the top map you'll be able to make out the white troop movement route that starts from the bottom from Marseilles, France, to the northeast shoulder of France, to the Sarreguemines area and over the border into Germany. My father was captured near Obergriesheim on April 2, in a roadside ambush. His main battles and skirmishes were in the Rhine Crossing, "Nordwind", and the blast through the insanely fortified Siegfrieg Line, with his capture just before the Jagst-Kocher River Engagement, a 9-day battle that began on April 4. As a POW, he was taken through Stuttgart, where they were inadvertently bombed by English bombers, then taken to Augsberg, stashed in a barn and finally liberated by the 45th Infantry Division.
By this time, the Battle of the Bulge was mopping up and you can see that the Rhur pocket is being closed (the "eye" of the beast).
I try to match the color palette I've established for the manuscript. This could be done as a 2-color process thereby making it much less expensive to print. And I like subtle color relationships. So that works out fine. The difficulty lies in correlating all the information I'm getting on troop movement from different sources; I've found errors in official troop Morning Reports that differ in dates and places from personal memoirs of soldiers, etc.
after
before
