Alvin Davis-Editor-Emeritus
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        March 18,,  2003  (D + 21,4217)      51 Spears Street,   Canton, NY   13617         popgator@northnet.org               (315) 386 2973

INSIGHT

    "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY."
 
                                                                                                          --Benjamin Franklin

 
WINSTON CHURCHILL

Delivered before Parliament, June 4, 1940, after the successful Dunkirk campaign

. . .I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty. . .we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home . . . .Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo. . ., we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. . .

"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me."
--- General George S. Patton
Remember what happened in 1940 When the French tactic of sitting back, behind the Maginot Line, on the defense, waiting and appeasement was used and France was completely defeated in a matter of weeks.
 
When World War I finally ended, France vowed never again to let Germany, the so-called "beast that sleeps on the other side of the Rhine," violate its territory. French politicians and generals conceived the Maginot Line, a network of forts and blockhouses, as an obstacle to any future invasion. Although it has become notorious as a universal metaphor for bungling.
Extending about 150 miles from Sedan in the west to beyond Wissembourg in the east, the Line bristled with some 50 large fortifications, each within cannon range of another. Buried 100 feet and more under hills and ridges, the impregnable complexes were manned by up to 1,000 troops who were transported between their elaborate barracks and heavily armed combat bunkers by trolleys. They contained everything that was needed to support life underground and were virtually impervious to enemy infiltration.

Germany did invade France again, of course, but it went around the Maginot Line. The Line never fired a shot, and withering on the vine, surrendered.

 
 


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  ..Editor....
     ..Popgator..
Alumni
notes
 
       

 

    I Just received word today 03/18/03 from James Gonyea,  That Comrade Howard King of Willow Grove PA passed away on March 03, 2003
 
 

Old Guys & War Path Tales

                                          "The Mother Of All Ironies"

    As a youngster in the 1930's I recall listening with some degree of awe to the tales told by World War One veterans of their wartime exploits and also visiting the County Historical Assc. And viewing relics, uniforms etc. of soldiers of all previous wars.
      By the time it came my turn I had made up my mind that I would like to acquire a German Steel Helmet and if at all possible a Luger pistol.
      In 1945 I liberated my coalscuttle steel helmet in the Haguena area of the Alsace Lorraine, by stupidly climbing up on the side of a burning German tank and taking it from where the crew hung them when they entered the tank.  Some one pointed out that this could have been easily booby-trapped but I thought they hadn't had time to do that.
    My pistol turned out to be a P-38 which was the poor mans luger and as such was much more common.  We probably were not supposed to use non-issue equipment but I wore it all the time and nobody said any thing. As your rifle wasn't always right at hand it was comforting to have a weapon handy.
      Later I liberated a copy of Mein Kampf of course I couldn't read it as it was written in German.  However I viewed it as a pretty neat souvenir.
    One day while wearing my P-38, a veteran soldier pointedly told me that he had heard, the Germans soldiers had a nasty habit, in that if they captured a soldier with some of their equipment, they made the assumption that you killed the soldier you took it from.  Their solution for this problem was to insert the muzzle of the loaded weapon into the mouth of the prisoner and pulling the trigger.
    This got my attention, and as normally at these bridge sites we were in very close proximity to the enemy, who for some reason seemed to think our building a bridge was a bad idea for them.
    In reaction (call me chicken if you will) the next time we went into a bridge site in the middle of the night, I tossed my 3 souvenirs into a nearby ditch.  For all I know they are still there or on some other GI's fire place mantle.
      Fifty years later browsing through a used bookstore I came across a copy of Mein Kampf printed in English, so figuring better late than never I purchased it.  I have used it for some research and really never read the whole thing but scanning it was surprised how topical some of this stuff is even though written in 1924.

    Now I have another dilemma.  As there has been a form of censorship created in America called "Political Correctness" where by if they don't agree with what you say or how you say it you are forbidden to say it.
   I find myself here in the year 2002 in the United States of America, flashing back 50 years and fearful of revealing that I have a copy of Mein Kampf, lest I find myself, if not physically at least verbally, placed in some Twenty First Century Gulag.
    Right now I am looking for a ditch in which I can covertly toss my copy of Mein Kampf without being picked up for littering.   I guess what goes around comes around.

    I have always been pretty optimistic but the more America loses its traditional values, I do look at the future for our grand children with some trepidation.

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From: Dick Stafford
To: Francis Gates
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 9:09 AM
Subject: Re: My Souvenirs

Francis:
"Political Correctness"  is in my opinion a bunch of Bull Crap.
What is correct is the Truth...presented in such a was as to not deliberately
or unnecessarily hurt someone......the bleeding hearts that coined that phrase
need to get a life !!

    I had a very good friend, Ambrose "Red" Blake who was a medic in an engineer battalion.
He was captured in the battle for Bastonge...because he stayed behind to tend to eight
wounded men who could not be moved fast enought to escape,

Since he was in good health the Germans put him to work in various hospitals
or aid stations as they slowly moved him back from the action.

He and a buddy were hauling litters into the medical area one day when they
came upon a wounded German clutching a Hershey bar!!
Their reaction was the same as the guy who warned you about the pistol.
It could have only come from one place....an American soldier.

They took it away from him....split it EXACTLY in two and devoured it on the spot.
The Kraut of course was hollering like hell....until a German Sgt.  who liked Red came out
to see what the ruckus was all about.....the wounded German claimed these Americans
swiped his candy...(poor boy !).....The Sgt said "Red did you do that???

Red...with the chocolate still stuck to the roof of his mouth said...Sargeant...
what the hell kind of man do you think I am???

The Sgt walked away...just shaking his head...he never heard the big GULP as Red swallowed the balance of his treat!!

As Paul Harvey likes to say:  and thats the rest of that story.
DICK says...strange but true...I heard it from Red Blake himself !!!:
 
 

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From: Francis Grandy
To: Francis Gates
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 12:29 PM
Subject: Souvenirs
 
Hi Fran,

      Very interesting and well presented account of your souvenir hunting days. You showed me how to compose like that but have not yet tried it...

       While doing a story on the battle fields of Verdun, France back in the 50's I found a WW I German hand grenade. You know, it looks like a stick with a large tomatoe can on the end. I put in the trunk of the Stripes car and later in the trunk of my 1950 mercury. Talk about stupid, it rattled around there for a long time until one of the Germans working in production told me that it could be still live......I immediately dug a hole in the sand behind the Stripes softball field and buried it there. Some day somone will find it with a metal detector and probably wonder how it ever got so far from the trenches......WE should have put our souvenirs together--but yours might have gotten blown up!

Best,. Red
 
 


    Recently I stumbled on neat web page titled The Cigarette Camps, The U.S Army Camps in the LeHavre Area, WW II.  For Camps Lucky Strike and Twenty Grand they have quoted from and linked to our 488th page.  I have linked their page on our 488th History page at the Camp Lucky Strike paragraph.    They also would like to be contacted by any one who might have been stationed or passed through these camps or have any thing such as tales, photos or artifacts, to add from an historical perspective as they are still building these pages.  I was surprised to note that they list 9 of these cigarette camps, as a very small part of the big picture I had only been aware of two or three.
         They can be contacted at        Cigarette Camps Le Havre Area WW II
Kilroy was here !

  You will notice that I have added the Kilroy logos.  This was a big deal in WW II every where a GI went some one with paint or chalk or whatever would have scrawled this graffiti on a fence, house or anything that didn't move before you got there even if the Germans had just moved out moments before.   The point man in an infantry squad would round a corner and there he would be.   I have more recently learned from an impeccable source that the Legend of Kilroy was started by a shipyard inspector during WW II named James J. Kilroy, he used the Kilroy logo to indicate what areas of the ship under construction that he had inspected.   The GI's traveling on those ships picked up on it and the legend was born and perpetuated.
    Some other places it has been seen are on top of Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe and scrawled on the dust of our moon.
    An outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill for the Potsdam conference.   The first person to use it was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?".

488th E-Mail Addresses
These are the addresses known to me.  If you know others, send them to me to add to this listing.
Edie (May) Robinson    EMR4698@aol.com          Galen & Bonnie Frantz    104077.447@compuserve.com
George Edlin         GEOEDL@Aol.com                 Harvey & Barb Lewis        bblewis@aol.com
Hilary Lipson        HeeHeeLips@AOL.Com           Jim & Dea Gonyou                BEETMAN@aol.com             Merlin Winkle        RayWinkle@Yahoo.com           Paul & Geneva Robinson        engrob@aol.com
Robert & Naida Lipson   rlipson@elp.rr.com Mac & Marge McCauley    macmccauley@mail.com                      Fran & Mary Gates   popgator@northnet.org Lee & Ginny Wachenheim            patwach@frontiernet.net
 Lloyd & Joyce Conklin    LTconklin@aol.com       Wayne & Lynn Morgan  Lynnamorgan@aol.com
Carol Carr-Amer    GeoCarr1@comcast.net                         Jerry & Barb Grunes      grunesbarb@aol.com