Thoughts on WWII » Archive for May 2009
Memorial Day 2009 Netherlands American Cemetery
I am at a loss for words to describe my feelings and emotions after visiting the Netherlands American Cemetery and participating in their Memorial Day ceremonies. It seems that, to many Americans, Memorial Day has become just another Holiday. Most Americans look at it as a day off work and a reason to fire up the grill and have a party. I must say, with deep regret, that I had fallen into that mentality myself. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Family, Featured, Memorial Day
A visit to the Malmedy Massacre site
We took a long weekend mini-vacation to the Netherlands American Cemetery for their Memorial Day services. On the way I couldn’t pass up the chance to stop at the scene of the Malmedy Massacre. We hit Lignueville and followed the path, in reverse, of CCR (7th AD) and Pieper’s Battlegroup. I was pleasantly surprised to find the Baugnez 44 Historical Center, newly opened in 2007, right next to the field of the massacre. Our first … Read entire article »
Filed under: Battle of the Bulge, Travel/Visits, Tribunals
Fallen But Not Forgotten
I will post links to some good websites that I find through my surfing of the net. The one that I post today was actually sent to me by a friend from AWON, American WW II Orphans Network. The website is called Fallen But Not Forgotten. This website is dedicated to paying tribute to the 8301 American heroes buried at the Netherland American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. The authors of this site want publish the story of every soldier buried there and make sure it is not forgotten. I browsed through the pages today and I am very impressed by the amount of detail and respect the site pays our fallen service members of WWII. I emailed the site authors using their contact form and will hopefully soon have my grandfathers … Read entire article »
Filed under: European Theater (ETO), Web Site
Malmedy Massacre
I wrote the below essay for a class I just finished on the Battle of the Bulge. Very interesting class and I hope to visit the bulge battlefields in June or July. The Malmedy Massacre is a very hard event to look at with an open mind, at least from the American viewpoint, due to the massive amounts of information that portray the Germans as merciless and murderers. The little bit that I have seen on documentaries or movies have shown that the PWs (Prisoners of War) that were shot were done so without cause and without provocation. However, in preparing for this class and this paper I have reviewed several sources of information about the Malmedy incident and Lt. Col. Peiper. Peiper was considered an honorable and bold soldier by … Read entire article »
Filed under: Battle of the Bulge, European Theater (ETO), Tribunals
Initial Posting
I created this weblog several months ago with the intention of posting at least weekly. I have not done so, obviously. One of my intentions with this blog is to write more in order to get better at writing. I enjoy writing and I enjoy WWII so why not combine the two in a way that I can improve in both. You can’t get better at anything unless you practice. So, I am no longer going to make excuses for not writing for this blog. I have a couple of essays that I’ve written over the past month or so for different classes so I will post them to get the ball rolling. var addthis_language = 'en';var addthis_options = 'email, favorites, digg, delicious, myspace, google, facebook, reddit, live'; … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
