WWII Event Photos - The Long Winter - Washington, US

Not sure if this goes here or somewhere else, mods please move if I am in the wrong place!

Jan. 12, 1945

Dearest Wife,

Sorry it has been so long since I have written. This damn war has a way destroying any time to write. We’re somewhere in Belgium right now trying to push through some German fortifications before we can make the move into Germany and end this stinking war. The weather has been awful the last few weeks, rain, sleet, hail – everything you could imagine. I’ve been soaked to the bone for what seems like months and everything is coated in mud.

Our new replacements have been coming in yesterday and today. Mostly a bunch of baby faced kids with no real experience, let alone combat experience. Surprisingly though the morale is pretty high. One of the kids fell in a foxhole filled with water up to his waist coming back from a patrol last night! We had to find him some dry clothes while we dried out his soaking ones. We started a little fire after the rain let up, Top was pretty angry about that! Luckily the Germans are on the run for the most part and nothing bad happened but it was either loose a guy to hypothermia or take a risk with the fire. We’d put a big hurtin’ on Jerry that afternoon, including taking out a mortar position and a PAK40 (a big anti-tank gun) so we figured we had earned a fire. I’m still hearing about it from first sergeant though.

One of the good things about the fire though was hot chow. One of the things we found when we finally overran the German bunkers were several cases of food. They had been stolen from one of our supply jeeps that was ambushed a couple of days ago. We opened up several cans of beef stew and poured it into a helmet and heated it up over the fire. I had forgotten just how good warm food could be! Even canned rations on a cold night make for an excellent meal. We also found a case of some German wine, I think it was Berliner or something like that. In any case, it really hit the spot. The vets in the group all brought out what they’d been saving up for the last few weeks and we had a veritable feast compared to what we’ve had for the last few months. One guy even broke out some Coca Cola and some Hershey’s bars!

Good thing we had a nice warm meal because the next day was brutal. Sgt. Johnston is our platoon sergeant and he was not impressed with the new recruits. Most of these kids hadn’t seen the business side of a razor let alone heard the sound of rifles shooting down range in a fight. A lot of them didn’t come back after our first push on the German’s main line of defense. Lt. Warren briefed the men on the tactical situation and made it perfectly clear we had to take out this defensive line. We were up against a small but hardened Fallshirmjager unit and an SS mountain division. These weren’t the “old men and boys” but top notch combat vets who had been fighting for twice as long as most of our guys had been shaving. The boys did good but it was a bloody, gruesome fight the entire way.

I was surprised though, several Germans actually surrendered as we kept pouring it on. I don’t know if they were just running low on ammo or if they were as tired of this wet, muddy miserable place as we were. On Friday night, one of our patrols had found a couple of Krauts and managed to capture them and bring them back to camp. Myself, Lt. Warren and Captain Robison integrated them and found out they were the ones who had ambushed our supply jeep earlier in the week. They were both FJ, I think it was 5th but between my bad German and their worse English, it was hard to tell. One of them was actually fairly friendly and told us a good amount of information. The other was definitely tight lipped and gave the other some hard looks as he answered our questions. “Namen, rank und serial number ist alles ich hab zu say” he kept repeating. Warren didn’t like that answer and between him and Captain Robison – I think the other one knew we meant business.

With the information we gathered from these prisoners and the information on positions that our recon team had found – we began to plan the next morning’s attack. There was a series of interlocked machine gun positions that we had to push through to send Jerry packing. We took out 1st platoon and began the assault around 0900. The results were less then stellar.

We lost more then half the platoon on the first wave, mostly because the new recruits froze up when the German machine guns barked to life. It was like trying to push a straw through a frozen glass of water getting the boys moving. We were able to get through the first position but the Germans counter attacked with a ferocity that would have made Satan himself proud. Lt. Warren had to order a withdraw in order to get 2nd platoon up to the fight, we ended up loosing the first position we took. Every inch was like a mile as we crawled on our bellies through the muck and mud.

Looks like we have a briefing in about 5 minutes so I have to cut this short. Tell the girls I love them and I will see them soon. I can’t wait to be home and I miss you more every day. I’ll try to write more tomorrow.

Yours forever,

D

My favorite 25 photos from legendary photographer Charles Peterson. I edited them a bit to desaturate them, so you can see the originals here:

http://www.charlespeterson.net/longwinter/

My favorite 33 photos from Saturday of The Long Winter taken by David Hintze. It was unnaturally wet and cold but it was the best WWII event ever! You can see all 300+ photos at http://www.gwagdesigns.com