January 27-30, 1944 — Phil and his men reclaimed the momentum from the Germans
January 27, 2025
“Vaccine News You Can Use” for Family Physicians — Winter 2025 — Part 2
January 29, 2025The average infantryman had the pockets of his combat jacket crammed with rations, shaving articles, pictures, cigarettes, candy, dry socks, writing paper and pens, and mess kit with a spoon and fork. He had his raincoat folded over the back of his belt or wore it to help keep warm. He carried from two to four Army-issue thin wool blankets and a shelter-half slung over his shoulder.[1]
Whenever the GIs had to make a forced march of more than just a few miles the roadside would be strewn with blankets, overcoats, overshoes, and gas masks. A truck would follow along behind, collect the equipment, bring it forward, and reissue it—hopefully before dark.[1]
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Audie Murphy wrote:
In these days my division is engaged in one of the toughest assignments in its history: eliminating the Colmar Pocket, a heavily fortified area rolling south from our lines toward the Swiss border.”In effect, it is a huge and dangerous bridgehead thrusting west of the Rhine like an iron fist. Fed with men and materiel from across the river, it is a constant threat to our right flank; and potentially it is a perfect springboard from which the enemy could start a powerful counterattack.
The division has clipped the fringes of the pocket and is poised near the town of Guémar for an attack on the hard core itself. The area, swept by icy winds from the Vosges, favors the enemy defensive. It is composed of patches of forests, flat fields, and meadows, and numerous villages which have been converted into German strongholds.
The enemy is well supplied with armor. Tanks, concealed in the forests, dominate the open plains over which we have to advance. The temperature, even at mid-day, seldom rises above fourteen degrees. Snow is almost knee-deep. Even without the harassment of enemy fire, the nights are one long hell in which it is our full-time concern to keep from freezing.[2]
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[1] Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, 378.
[2] Murphy. To Hell and Back. 228..
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