I am a fanatic about reading newspapers and LIFE magazines that were published during WWII, so I was happy to find this newspaper for sale on ebay...at a price I could afford. It tells of the "current Nazi offensive" at Kursk entering it's 4th day. Given the fact that we already know the outcome of this pivotal battle made this article even more prophetic to me. By day four the Germans had lost an estimated 1,843 tanks and 810 planes, and the reporter made the comment that "The Germans may now have involved themselves to the point where they could not extract themselves even if they wanted to." Now THAT to me is PROPHETIC! As we know, Hitler was directing the war himself now and ignoring the advice of his Generals, and both he and Stalin had a policy of "Not One Step Back", despite the huge losses on both sides of men and material. Hitler had grossly underestimated the vast reserves of the Russian Army (as he later admitted in a taped conversation) and now the tide was beginning to turn. When Hitler needed more troops and armour the most, he was forced to send many of his best divisions back to Italy in an attempt to hold back the Allied invasion of Anzio. In less than a year the invasion of Normandy took place, forcing the Germans to fight what could only be considered a delaying action as the borders of The Reich began to crumble. Dang! I get exited when I read old newspapers!
Here`s a link to a series of 416 maps form the Library of Congress.
Each quadrangle sheet shows the position of the 12th Army Group and adjacent Allied Forces and of the German units for each day from D-Day (6 June 1944) thru 26 July 1945.
On a lot of the maps after sept 1944, you can see the locations of 7th Army & 6 Corps HQs and position of all the divisions in the area by zooming in toward the bottom of the map.
These maps are very helpful for finding exact daily location of almost any unit.
as usual i got up at the crack of dawn with my par to make the trip down to stoneliegh, had a wander around, bumped into 'zimmer' had a chat bought a few odds and ends i.e an origonal thompson amo bag 42 dated for £15!! what a bargain anyway... wandered around did all the inevatble shaking of hands, then spoted a small display over in the far corner, low and behold it was 'luky' 'wobley' and 'kelso' with captain allaway, in a foxhole on the outer edges of the boi jaques forrest, the display looked amazing, a 30 cal pit, unbeilivable, cant wait to display there next year, i will try and source some photos for you all to look at becuase words dont do it justice! we have luky to thank for the amazin display! well dun, thoughrly diserve your promotion.
Here is a scan from my Grandfather’s notebook (one of several he had.) This page is from Oct 20, 1944 and is a sketch from the plan for the Charmes Bridge over the Moselle. I looked up "Charmes Bridge" on Google and found this. As the regiment in question passed over the bridge more than a month before I don't think they were the same but I it was all I could find.
I've got more pages from his notebook that I will add periodically. As they need to be of a fairly large size to appreciate, I can't have a lot of them on at the same time.
