Posted on 01/23/2015 4:30:33 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/0/23.htm
January 23rd, 1945 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyers HMCS Sioux and Algonquin arrived Clyde with Convoy RA-63.
FRANCE: Strasbourg: The French First Army has halted the German offensive, North Wind, at the last bridge before Strasbourg. General Eisenhower was willing to give up the city, liberated on 23 November, in order to allow the US Seventh Army to withdraw, but General de Gaulle threatened to remove his forces from the Allied command if Strasbourg was sacrificed. Eisenhower gave way, but said that the French must defend the city.
NETHERLANDS: NETHERLANDS: L/Cpl Henry Eric Harden (b.1912), Royal Army Medical Corps, went, under fire, to aid three men. He rescued one, but was killed on a third trip. (Victoria Cross)
GERMANY: Berlin: Hitler belatedly agrees to a major new shipbuilding programme and orders the extension of the slave-labour system in the northern dockyards.
Berlin: Count Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, the leader of the “Kreisau Circle” resistance movement, is executed. (Tim Lanzendörfer)
Berlin: Hitler appoints Himmler, who has no experience of operational command, C-in-C Army Group Vistula.
The Second Division of the Russian Liberation Army is formed under General Zverev. It will fight with the German army and is composed of former Soviet Prisoners of War.
Königsberg: The German cruiser Emden transports the bodies of Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg and his wife Gertrude back to Germany, in the face of the advancing Soviet forces. They had been buried, against their wishes, at Tannenburg, the site of his greatest WWI victory against the Russians. After the war they will be reburied at Elisabeth Church in Marburg, near Frederick Wilhelm I and Frederick II. (John Nicholas)
U-2360, U-3523 commissioned.
U-2364 launched.
FINLAND: U-242 lands a German agent.
WAR AT SEA: PACIFIC: The USS Extractor, H.M. Babcock in command, a Navy salvage vessel is torpedoed by the USS Guardfish, Douglas Hammond in command. The Guardfish has mistaken the USN vessel for a Japanese I Class submarine in the early morning light. Both commanders share the blame in a Board of Inquiry hearing. (John Nicholas)
Destroyer escort USS Corbesier sank HIJMS I-48 off Yap.
CANADA: The first of Canada’s conscripted soldiers leave Halifax for overseas duty. (Dave Hornford)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: SS Vigsnes sunk by U-1172 at 53.33N, 04.17W.
Page 8, Curtis LeMay takes over Pacific bomber command.
The Japs have no idea the hell to be unleashed.
Oh, yeah, Curtis LeMay is gonna put a world of hurt on Japan.
Hamburgers in a can? I guess if I was in a frozen foxhole, Id eat 'em.
He graduated from Ohion State (BSCE) and was in my fraternity Theta Tau. The chapter used to have his photo on the wall of the house.
He led an unbelieveable number of bombing missions. Brave man.
He was the source for the George C Scott character in Dr Stangelove.
To a truly hungry man, that would look like manna from heaven.
The complete correspondence of Roosevelt with the tyrant Stalin.
Medal of Honor recipient Master Sergeant Nicholas Oresko:
In the early morning hours on Jan. 23, 1945, the 28-year-old set off to take out an enemy machine-gun bunker.
“We [had] attacked their positions several times, and we got beaten back,” he said. “It’s terrible. It scares the hell out of you.
“So we figured this time, let’s sneak up on them,” Oresko said. “Instead of getting prepared with artillery fire, let’s just go as it gets dark and sneak up on them and then attack ’em.”
Oresko started out solo at 4:30 a.m. that cold winter morning. And he was resigned to not coming back alive. “I looked up to heaven and said, ‘Lord, I know I’m going to die, please make it fast,’ ’’ he said.
He tossed a grenade into the bunker and then rushed it with his M-1 rifle. Another machine gun opened fire and knocked him down, wounding him in the right hip and leg, yet he managed to crawl to another bunker and take it out with another grenade.
“The machine gunner who shot me thought I was dead,” Oresko said. “I was able to move around, sneak around, so they didn’t see me. They saw me go down. They thought they’d killed me, but they didn’t. I slipped around and somehow got around, and they were in a bunch.”
Oresko killed 12 German soldiers and refused to leave the area until he was sure his unit had completed its mission.
“They wanted to take me back to the hospital,” Oresko said. “I said ‘No, let’s take the position first.’ I didn’t want to give it up after doing so much.”
President Harry S. Truman presented the Medal of Honor to Oresko during a White House ceremony on Oct. 30, 1945.
http://heroesmemorial.org/content/medal-honor-recipient-msgt-nicholas-oresko
I just wonder what kind of ideas will come to him for the Japanese as he sits back in his chair, lights a cigar and looks at the match a bit before putting it out?
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