Kilroy was here Too! 

  Engineer Museum ft. Leonard Wood

U.S. Military Cemetery   (Luxembourg)

      ....WW II Memorial  (Patty Andrews)

  Francis "Red" Grandy Photographer 

     D-Day Memorial Bedford, Va. (29th National Guard Infantry)

LST    651    (William C. Lounsbury)..

    In his book The Last Days of Patton,   Ladislas Farago  wrote in his epilogue:   "The long road out of Luxembourg City that leads to this vast burial ground of American heros is named for him:  the Boulevard General Patton in Hamm.  The cemetery is an exclusive club.   By order of the Department of the Army, its membership is restricted and complete.   No further burials may be made in these hallowed grounds except of those remains that may still be found in these battlefields."     Farago further writes  "Mrs. Patton died in 1954, in an accident, like her husband , of a broken neck after a fall from her horse.     Her wish, well known to her descendants, was to be buried with her husband......  But since it was still impossible to bring General Patton's remains to the United States,  Mrs. Patton's body was allegedly taken to Hamm and buried surreptitiously in her husbands grave....."
    "Close to the huge wrought iron gate stands the white stone chapel in the woods, flanked at a lower level by two large pylons on which are posted colorful maps made of granite.  They recall the feats of the American armies in the Battle of the Bulge and the advance to the Rhine.  Also inscribed on the pylons are the names of 370 men whose remains were never recovered or could not be identified.  Fountains trees and flower beds contribute to the exquisite beauty and dignity of this limited assembly."
    "The trains to and from Contern slow down each time they pass the southern edge of this huge final resting place of 5,077 American soldiers and blow their whistles.   The planes from the nearby airport dip their wings in rueful, respectful salute."
         My daughter successfully bridged the generation gap when we were visiting this cemetery and while walking among these monuments she remarked  "Why Dad the vast majority of these boys are eighteen and nineteen years old."   Myself I often pause in reflection wondering what these boys would have done with another fifty years.
Further along we came to a cross which was different, not in it's size or shape but it stood out among the others and I realized the lettering was in gold. The inscription read  Day G. Turner  S/Sgt.  319th Regt.  80th Inf.,  Pennsylvania,..  Feb 5, 1945         Medal of Honor    .      About  5 years later one of those coincidences occurred that leave you wondering.  I was reading an article about a medal of honor recipient when a bell rang  and with a little research found it to be the same person.  From Sgt. Turners Citation:  He commanded a 9 man squad with the mission of holding a critical flank position.  When overwhelming numbers of the enemy attacked under cover of withering artillery, mortar and rocket fire, he withdrew his squad into a nearby house, determined to defend it to the last man.  The enemy attacked again and again and were repulsed with heavy losses.   Supported by direct tank fire they finally gained entrance but the intrepid sergeant refused to surrender although 5 of his men were wounded and 1 was killed.  He boldly flung a can of flaming oil at the first wave of attackers, dispersing them, and fought doggedly from room to room, closing with the enemy in fierce hand-to-hand encounters.  He hurled hand grenade for hand grenade, bayoneted 2 fanatical Germans who rushed a doorway he was defending and fought on with the enemy's weapons when his own ammunition was expended.  The savage fight raged for 4 hours and finally, when only 3 men of the defending squad were left unwounded , the enemy surrendered.   Twenty-five prisoners were taken, 11 enemy dead and a great number of wounded were counted...............

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        Today May 27, 1999:     I read an an article by Patty Andrews promoting the WW II Memorial in Washington D. C.        For you youngsters,    Patty Andrews is the surviving sister of the Andrews Sisters, the others being Laverne and Maxene, a singing trio who were very popular and during WW II and other conflicts made many tours with the USO entertaining the troops in this country and overseas.
    Portions of her article can best be expressed in her words:
"My sisters and I probably met face to face with more soldiers in WW II than any general or field marshall.  The Andrews Sister entertained tens of thousands of GI's at bases here and abroad throughout the war, and I can still see so many of their smiling American faces.  I sometimes wonder how many of those faces made it home safely and how many are now just faint memories.  I'll carry their memory for as long as I live............
    The faces of those who survived are now creased and seasoned by the years, but they still smile when they see me.  And I see them all the time.  In airports or shopping malls.  These veterans of global war are living their autumn years happily, oblivious to the fact that they are walking history........
    They won a victory so complete that we hardly remember a time when America wasn't a superpower.........standing against a global gang of dictators.  Today we take it all for granted.
    Those who died to make it possible for us to forget that brutal era would no doubt be satisfied that their sacrifice was worth it.  But they were so young.  The soldiers who came to the USO shows were mostly in their late teens and early 20's.  So young that the shows had the flavor of a huge high school football game or a Boy Scout jamboree.   Nearly a half million of these brave kids would never even know if we won or lost the war or how 50 years of peace and prosperity would transform their country.   Their faces will be always be innocent and brave, but unknowing.
    Today before the memories fade and before the last veteran dies, we need to enshrine their courage,   We need a permanent place to honor the generation that gave so much so long ago.  We need a memorial that matches their monumental sacrifice and their towering devotion to freedom.   In short we need an official World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington.   The site has already been selected, all we need now is the will to build it."
    Anyone who would like to help or learn more can write to Patty  c/o   World War II Memorial Campaign,   Rose Monroe Society,
                                                                                                                               P. O. Box 96766,   Washington,   D.C.       20090

  Wednesday January 24, 2001  I finally got my act together and did what I had been talking about doing for too long.     I was out for a drive and found myself in the Russell, NY area and decided then and there that today would be the day.   Pretty snowy but a nice day so I drove into Lazy River which isn't really a River but is located on the Grasse River.  The reason it is called Lazy River is that John Grandy years ago established a little amusement park here and named it Lazy River.  It consisted of miniature golf, out door shuffle board and and indoor roller skating pavilion.  This was and still is a popular area for group picnics.    I was also familiar with this site as when working for the St. Lawrence County Highway Dept   I had designed and done the layout of the New Lazy River Bridge, back in the 70's  when we replaced the old pony truss prior bridge.  One reason I remember the old Pony truss bridge, which had consisted of several spans, is that I got fired here.    On this particular Spring day, a group of big wheels had been inspecting this bridge, the River was in full flood and the ice field above the bridge was breaking up, the water and ice were up over the deck and the whole structure was shaking and quaking.   We all walked as a group out onto the structure (which wasn't to bright).  Standing in the rear rank, being a perennial smart ass and having a wrench in hand I reached out and gave the nearest chord a sharp crack with the wrench.   The County Highway Supt. was standing directly in front of me and his first reaction was to shrink visibly down  into his overcoat and when he recovered his aplomb was to fire me on the spot.
    He hired me back after lunch and we went on to replace this bridge, over a period of a year or so with a new one.  In doing this we changed the alignment and had to purchase some right of way to do so.    It was through this process that I met John Grandy who was the owner of Lazy River.  He lived in his farm house which was up at the intersection of the back road to Russell on property contiguous with Lazy River which probably was originally an adjunct to the farming operation.  John was a real gentleman and I had some good chats with him.
    This long winded lead in finally gets me back to John Grandy's son Francis "Red" Grandy who for 38 years starting in WW II was a photographer with the Stars & Stripes newspaper.
    It's a little touchy traversing the road back into Red's house so I slipped her into 4 wheel drive and got in there OK, keeping one eye on the river which parallels the drive which is probable 500' or so off the main road.
    Fortunately Red was home and I caught him in his garage working on his Van.  He was complaining that the battery had failed and he was upset as it was only 10 years old.  I tried to explain that I thought that was pretty good as the best batteries are warranted for 5 years on a pro rated basis.  This didn't seem to impress him to much.
   We had a pretty good chat for the next couple of hours and I got several pictures of Red feeding his deer herd as well of several pictures of him in his gallery of photos which are in his Rec room and surround his pool table.
    I was fortunate to catch Red at home just by chance as he informed me that the next week he was going to california on a ski-ing trip.  Not bad for 78 and counting, I would say.
    After processing the pictures I contacted the Electronic on line edition of the Stars & Stripes to see if they would be interested in any current photos of Red.   There again I got lucky in the timing, as I heard back from their on line editor Joe Gromelski that they were planning on posting some of Red's photo's on their site in the near future and these current photos of Red might add a nice touch.   Accordingly I forwarded some to him.
    Joe responded that he thought he could fit some of them in the article and he will keep me posted as to when the article on Red's work would be on their site.  He also said "I never met Red but have seen the great photos he took and heard all kinds of stories about him."   Joe later added "Please tell Red he's still remembered as one of the best shooters we ever had."

  Click Here for the Stars & Stripes Web Site

In 1943, Russell native Francis "Red" Grandy left home after high school to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps. After a couple of years, he enrolled as a cinema student at the University of Southern California and graduated in 1950. For a few months he traveled through Europe with a friend and then took a job as a still photographer with Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper for military personnel abroad. Within four months, he had the rare opportunity to take the picture of a lifetime, a shot of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower receiving the news that his old rival, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, had been relieved of his command by President Truman. That picture was later published by the news services, major newspapers and magazines, and would be selected as "news photo of the year" by several prestigious organizations. An exciting and distinguished career that would span 35 years in Europe as chief photographer for Stars and Stripes was begun and Grandy would be assigned to cover most of the major events of the Cold War in pursuit of the perfect photograph.

Grandy and his photographs give dramatic testimony to the military and political activities of that era, as well as glimpses of local life in many countries and the visits of celebrities to military bases and European capitals. As the small selection for this exhibition attests, his subjects ranged from Khruschev to French orphans, from bullfights to unexploded napalm bombs, from presidents to starlets to Muhammed Ali.

Red maintains that every photograph has a story behind it and he is fond of telling each of them with rich detail. This exhibition not only illustrates his extraordinary photographic skills but tells some of the stories that this veteran of life among our nation's military service personnel can tell better than almost anyone.

In the late 1980s, Red returned to the Hermon area, to take over the family business of Lazy River Playground and to spend time with his brother Lloyd and other members of his family. He maintains contact with colleagues and old friends from his days with Stars and Stripes. A personal goal of his is to have the 45,000 plus negatives of photographs taken by photographers for the newspaper be preserved in an appropriate repository.

   The retired Stars and Stripers also have an Association which sponsors the Stars and Stripes Museum as well as putting out a news letter which can be seen linked here.
    Bob Wicker, Kathy Chipman Wicker and Francis "Red" Grandy make up the entertainment committee.
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    How often we hear certain self serving political elements denigrate the service of many American patriots in State National Guard Units as a form of draft dodging.  We understand that this is done to validate the omissions of their guy, as being the norm of the day.   I personally think the practice of demonizing others for the purpose of self aggrandizement is about as low as it gets.      However they do a real disservice to those patriots that served their country well and those who gave their all in service to their country while performing in State Guard Units.  Probably half of the Infantry Units serving  in WW II were Guard Units and had very high  percent of casualties and many Units performed along side of and fully as well as regular Federal Units.
    Recently "Skip" Salvas sent me an article from the Nashua,  NH,   SUNDAY TELEGRAPH  by John Lang of the Scripps Howard News Service.  This article is based on the story of a new D-Day Memorial, being built in Bedford, Va.  The following excerpts from it are self explanatory and put the lie to the attempted denigration of such service.

        "On a high hilltop far from any ocean, a monument is rising for the 6,603 Americans who fell on the sands and sank in the waves while storming ashore in the largest military landing in history.....   The question is, why here?  Why is the National D-Day Memorial being built in Bedford, a small town little known outside the Blue Ridge of southern Virginia, away from anywhere associated with a mighty armada in World War II ?........
    It was 8:30 a.m. on a Monday in mid July 1944 when Elizabeth Teass reported for work at Green's Drug Store and took her seat at a teletype machine.  She'd no sooner rung the bell that signaled good morning to the Western Union office in Roanoke, Va, than it messaged back: "We have casualties."  She can't remember now how many telegrams came in that bad day..........
    No place in America suffered a higher per capita loss in the assault on Fortress Europe than Bedford with a population of 3,200...........
    It was no accident that the youths of Bedford died that day.  General Dwight D. Eisenhower picked them himself.  The supreme commander didn't know them personally, likely didn't know of their hometown.  But a landing on what would prove to be the deadliest point of invasion,  Omaha Beach, demanded the best troops.
    Eisenhower chose the First Division, the Big Red One and he chose the 29th Division, the Blue and the Gray.  The First was Regular Army, tested veterans of earlier combat in North Africa.   The 29th was  National Guard which explains why so many men from one community would die together that day.  Not because they weren't good soldiers, but precisely because they were.
    Says Richard Burrow, president of the D-Day Memorial Foundation:  "Ike knew they would fight for each other.  Brothers and cousins wouldn't cut and run on the guys next to them.".
    The 29th - a unit with a history back to the revolutionary War and to both sides in the Civil War - had three regiments, the 115th and the 175th from Maryland and the 116th from Virginia.  At 06:30 on June 6, 1944, it was the 116th that went in first.  Its order of battle was numerical and alphabetical:  First Battalion, then second; Company A then B ,C & D.
    Company A that's where most of the Bedford men were in the first boats in the first wave..........
    Of the 170 men in this company 91 were killed and 64 wounded.  Only 15 were able to keep fighting.  Of the 35 Bedford soldiers, 19 died in the first 15 minutes.  Two more died later in the day.  Two more were killed in following weeks as the allies pushed inland through the hedgerows.  Capt. Taylor Fellers was just about the first of 175,000 invading soldiers from 13 nations to set foot in France.  He fell dead right there.  All 20 soldiers from his boat died with him...........
    The sorrow of survivors is as old as warfare and is nothing new to folks along the Blue Ridge.  Bedford men marched with Col. George Washington in the French and Indian Wars.  Sons of Bedford marched in the Stonewall Brigade in defense of the South.  These rocky slopes are fertile ground for raising riflemen.
    It wasn't, however, their patriotism that took them to a beach in Normandy - though it was as patriots they fought and died.  It was done for a dollar.  The lure of the National Guard was the $ 1 it paid for Monday night training sessions, the $ 15 it paid for two weeks of summer training.............
    That's how it was for just about every soldier in the 29th Division, city boys from Baltimore and Roanoke, country boys from Maryland and Virginia communities much like those of Bedford County, some from as far as Kentucky and New York as the war went on.  They got their dollars and they got a war.
    The 29th fought without a stop for 11 months, until May 8, 1945.  In a division 18,000 strong, there were 22,000 casualties.  That represents a turnover of 125 percent.  And 50 percent of its casualties occurred in the first 47 days.
    And D-Day,  the deadliest day, was the first day of battle for every one of those Guardsmen..........
    It's the start of an agony that travels, that always comes home, as the pain came home to Bedford and to cities and farmhouses across America in the summer of the waiting and watching out the windows after June 6, 1944.
    After the fighting comes the knock knocking on doors, as after the crying came numbness.  After too long now comes a memorial.  For those who fell, it is always too late.  For the old ones here who loved the boys who marched
away and never marched back, it is just in time.
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  In November 2000 my wife Mary and I seeing the voyage played out daily on TV,  became aware of and took notice of the saga of the USS  LST - 325.  If you recall this Ship and it's original crew served in WW II landings in North Africa, Sicily, Salerno and Normandy.   At some later date it was turned over to the Government of Greece on a Lend-Lease Arrangement.

 
 

Following this story, we found a crew of former LST sailors and their group called the USS LST Ship Memorial Association , who's mission was to locate an operational LST and bring it to  the States as a permanent LST Memorial.
    An LST the old 325 was finally located in Greece and the rehabilitation and sailing of this ship on August 01, 2000 from Greece to Mobile Alabama on January 09, 2001 makes an interesting read.
    The log of this adventure can found along with other LST Links at    THE LOG OF THE LST 325.

  Mary knew that her brother William Lounsbury had served on an LST during WW II and she knew it was the LST 651, other than that she had heard nothing of Bills wartime experiences.  He had come out of the service quite ill and had spent a lot of years in and out of VA hospitals.  Since he had passed away about 12 years back she had really never learned much about those wartime days.  From the saga of the 325 we obtained the Web address of the LST Association and after contacting them were give the names and current addresses which they had of ten men who had served on the LST 651 with Bill.   Mary scored real good here and so far we have heard from four of them with John Lutz, who was the commander of Bill's group on the ship, also sending a log of the travels of the LST 651.  Portions of this log and these letters will follow as I try to put together a sequential tale here of the travels of the LST 651.  Better late than never as they say.
    Later Mary heard from Sidney Lenger who sent a tape of movies he took while serving on the 20 mm guns on the 651.   This was really hitting the jack pot and Mary had copies made which she sent to her other brother and sister.
    The surviving crew members are having a reunion in Holland Michigan this May 24 - 26, 2001.  One feature is a visit to the LST 393 which has been recently refurbished and is located in Muskegon nearby.   We have been invited to attend and may do that.
 
 
 
 

• 16   Oct.   1944        LST 651 launched at CHICAGO BRIDGE & IRON CO., Seneca, IL
• 23   Oct.                    Crew arrived from AMPHIBIOUS TRAINING COMMAND,  Camp     Bradford, VA and boarded LST 651
• 26   Oct.  -  2   Nov.  Traversed the Illinois River and the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge, LA
•  3    Nov. -  8 Dec.     Shake down and training cruises Gulf of Mexico.
• 10   Dec    1944         Departed NAVAL SUPPLY DEPOT, Gulfport MI, for COCO SOLO NAVAL BASE,  Canal Zone, Colon, Panama.
• 19 - 31   Dec.            Transversed the Panama Canal and arrived at San Diego, CA.
•  4 - 14   Jan.  1945    San Diego, CA to Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands.
• 24    Jan.                   On loaded LCT 1049 on board main deck.
• 26    Feb.                   Anchored Hutchinson's Creek, Tulagi Harbor, Florida Island.  Full combat load including LCT 1049 on main deck,  2 causeway pontoons, 150 tons of rations,  1,000 rounds of 20 mm ammunition, 400 troops,    17 LVT's on tank deck.
•  2 - 21 Mar.  1945      Landing maneuvers throughout the Solomon and Russell Islands
• 25    Mar.                   Departed Ulithi Atoll in convoy or Okinawa.
•  1     Apr.                    D-Day Okinawa.  Anchored off Yellow Beach 2. 0700 hours disembarked 17 LTV's and Marines.  Launched both pontoons and LCTV 1049.
•  3 - 8  Apr.                  Discharging cargo off various Okinawa beaches.
•  9       Apr.                   Loaded pontoons,  800 Marines and 35 vehicles, and set sail for Nago Wan,  Northern Okinawa.
• 11 - 25   Apr.              Involved in action at Okinawa
• 29  Apr.  23  June       San Pablo Bay, Leyte, Philippine Islands Dry Dock ARD-14 for repairs.
• 24  June  30  Aug.      Transporting troops an supplies, Okinawa, Phillipines and Ryuku Islands.
• 31  Aug.                       Beached at Pier 6 North Harbor, Manila.  Prepared to load 118th Engineer Combat Battalion.
•  3   Sep.       1945        Depart Manila Bay for Yokohama, Japan.
• 12  Sep. 10 Dec. 1945 Transport troops and supplies Philippine Island to and from Japan.
• 11  Dec.                        Arrive Malakal Harbor, Palau.  Embark 845 Japanese POW's, 45th Garrison Force, Imperial Japanese Navy.
• 21  Dec.                        Arrive Urga Ko, Honshu, Japan.  Nearby Yokosuka, Japanese Naval Base, entrance to Tokyo Bay.  Disembarked Japanese POW's.

31  Dec.       1945         Lt (jg)  John O. Lutz,  Engineering Officer detached from USS LST 651.   These excerpts from the log of the USS LST 651 were compiled by John O. Lutz 10 April 1997.

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