http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/0/28.htm
January 28th, 1945 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: On it’s second flight in the UK the Lockheed P-80 fighter jet, YP-80A-LO , USAAF s/n 44-83026, msn 080-1005, crashes killing the pilot.
FRANCE: Versailles: Eisenhower returns the command of the US Ninth Army, temporarily given to Montgomery, to Bradley.
GERMANY: Berlin: Civilians are ordered to start digging anti-tank ditches around the city.
The 1st Belorussian Front enters Pomerania.
Allied PoWs are marshalled by their German captors in prison camp Stalag Luft III, near Sagan, in southeastern Germany to be marched 90 kilometres across frozen countryside to Luckenwalde, near Berlin.
From the memoirs of Tom Hough, Canadian fighter pilot: The order came with characteristic German terseness. All Allied prisoners, more than 1,000 aircrew from Canada, Britain and other Commonwealth countries, were to be ready to evacuate Stalag Luft III on 30 minutes’ notice.
Tom Hough of the Royal Canadian Air Force had been expecting it, but the news still hit him and his fellow prisoners, or “kriegies,” like a ton of bricks. “Hysteria reigned. The pervading feeling was of immense relief not unaccompanied by apprehension. Val started playing his guitar, and in a spontaneous excess of spirits we all started singing,” he wrote 40 years later in an unpublished memoir.
After packing his meagre belongings, Mr. Hough, a Spitfire pilot who had joined the RCAF in 1941 and served with the RAF squadrons and with the Royal Australian Air Force in Egypt, had crash-landed behind enemy lines in Italy. A prisoner of war for almost a year, he paraded with the rest of the men. It was very cold and snowing lightly.
Now known as “the long march,” the event was duplicated at many other camps.
Walking 15 or 20 kilometres per day will take its toll of the prisoners, many of whom had been in captivity for five years.
Mr. Hough said. “What would happen to those too ill to walk? Many of us were suffering from foot trouble. Socks were removed, carrying parts of burst blisters with them. An increasing number were developing painful limps; many had developed coughs and running noses.
Some had temperatures. Many had diarrhea or intestinal infections.”
It was also the coldest winter Germany had experienced in 50 years and hundreds of PoWs collapsed and perished by the wayside. Ironically, Mr. Hough and his mates also had to contend with Allied aircraft that mistook them for a German column. In one incident alone, RAF Typhoon fighter bombers strafed and killed 60 PoWs.
Despite the horrors of the march, a comic incident occurred when a German officer made an unusual appeal, Mr. Hough wrote. “’If the kriegie who has stolen [his] birthday goose from his staff-car does not return it forthwith, you’ll all have to sleep in the snow. If he returns it immediately, no questions will be asked.’ The word was that it was too late, but apparently the officer settled for a D-bar [chocolate] and an unstated number of cigarettes.” (Henry Sirotin) Article by Buzz Bourdon, Globe and Mail, Thursday, May 5, 2006. Page S9. Link
U-2535 commissioned.
Crewman from U-348 died near Gotenhafen. [Matrose Hermann Witthöft].
BULGARIA: Sofia: Prince Cyril of Bulgaria is sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was regent in 1943-44.
LITHUANIA: Memel is occupied by the Russians, completing their occupation of Lithuania.
POLAND: Konev’s Red Army troops capture the Dabrowa coal mining area and the towns of Beuthen and Katowice.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Three USMC R4D5 (DC-3; C-47 type) aircraft from Squadron VMR 152 navigated for a flight of SBDs from Peleliu to Luzon. They arrive Luzon on the 29th. The SBDs were sent to assist the army for their dive bomb capabilities. (Bob Austin - Marine, navigator)
CHINA: The first supply convoy reaches China from Burma, via the reopened Ledo Road.
CANADA: Patrol vessel HMCS MacDonald paid off and returned to Dept of Fisheries.
U.S.A.: Aircraft carrier USS Antietam commissioned.
Destroyers USS Everett F Larson and Fred T Berry launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: A German minesweeper collided with U-1163 off Dronthein in Norwegian waters, damaging the U-boat slightly.
Robinson is an old cavalry post and was the home of the "buffalo soldiers," the all-black segregated cavalry. It later became a Quartermaster post for mustering animals used by the Army. In WWII, Robinson hosted a German POW camp, from which many worked on nearby farms and ranches.
Today Ft. Robinson is a state park and museum. It's worth a visit if you're in the area. I found the horse hospital very curious. They had special stalls for the patients and a huge operating room with the biggest, most oddly shaped operating table I've ever seen.
Still, the administration will not order the Army to give it back to its owners until October 1945, at which time a Supreme Court appeal will be dismissed as moot.
The experience embittered Sewell Avery, the man hauled out of his office feet first by soldiers. Some believe that experience played a role in his adopting ultra-conservative policies that let his post-War competition get ahead of Ward.