Very nice post card!

Here is a another Christmas related WWII image. One with a sad history in the context of the battle.

Updated link.

http://www.feldgrau.com/articles.php?ID=74

And a very Merry Christmas to everyone. Marion your IV Corps card is great but the, I suppose , German drawing of Mary and Jesus from Stalingrad really is something. I cannot get the web site to open. Can anyone translate or Shed more light on this for me?

Parker

Ah, I can't get the link to open either. It's blank! Oh, Capt O?????

I updated the link.

Thanks Capt O....Moving

Parker

Just shared that on Facebook. It is long, but I know that many of my WWII pals (and more) will enjoy the sentiment. Thanks.

And here is what my grandfather was doing Christmas Eve of 1944:

Todd, I sat here this morning and leafed through our " Engineers Bible" trying to tie up your grasndfather's notes with what was happening in December 1944. Sad to say, although there was much going on no mention was found. There was reference to the 2832'nd at Worms on the 25th March 1944 supporting the 7th Infantry.

It would be interesting to know about the new bridge and what Q809427 refers to.

Colin.

Not sure even if that would have been in reference to an official map or a locally produced grid for the area. What may have been in use at the time was the Hayford ellipsoid. The Wikipedia entry for the newer European datum, ED 50, only says the following "Some of the important battles of World War II were fought on the borders of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and the mapping of these countries had incompatible latitude and longitude positioning. This led to the setting up of ED50 as a consistent mapping datum for much of Western Europe." It would be interesting.

So many bridges! It seems since I stared my research almost 13 years ago, bridges have played an important part in leading me through the different campaigns.

In Sicily it was the Malati bridge near Lentini that Monty wanted captured intact to enable the Eighth Army to travel north towards Messina in his race with Patton! The "bridge in the sky" in northern Sicily as the 7th Army moved east, thanks to the efforts of the Combat Engineers.

So many important bridges once the allies were in mainland Italy. Even more so in Germany and the various crossings of the Rhine.

Then there were the bridges that found their way into history elsewhere in the world. The bridges at Toko Ri, the bridge on the river Kwai etc, etc.

Colin.