The FReeper Foxhole Revisits The Sinking of the SS Leopoldville (Dec. 24, 1944) - Dec. 24th, 2004

see educational sources

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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The FReeper Foxhole Revisits

Nightmare Before Christmas

As we here at Skylighters do each Christmas, we take a journey of remembrance back to that final Christmas of the war in Europe. We usually tell a story about what it was like to spend that holy day on a windswept ridge above the Seigfried line, or at a frozen airstrip in eastern France, or in a POW camp on the Polish frontier. Sometimes the stories are uplifting; other times, they're tragic. Sometimes, the story contains elements of both. The point is to remember what it was like for those who won our right, all those Decembers ago, to enjoy our freedoms this December, and there is no more poignant tale for this purpose than the sinking of the Leopoldville.

This year, thanks to the kindness of an English newspaper, we relay the story of the "Nightmare Before Christmas," the sinking of the troopship SS Leopoldville in the English Channel on Christmas Eve, 1944, a tragedy that took nearly 800 American lives. It's a story that few Americans of my generation are aware of, and even some of the WW II generation may not have heard.

As a (relatively) young man myself, it's always a sobering thing to read the names of war dead, and in the case of the Leopoldville, it seems all the more horrible that all those bright young men of the 66th Infantry Division ("The Black Panthers") died on Christmas Eve just under six miles from friendly shores. That a U-boat fired a torpedo into the former Belgian liner was a known risk of warfare. As a result, many of the young infantrymen aboard never saw Christmas 1944, or, indeed, another Christmas at all. But what contributed to the deaths of so many of the 800 and what happened afterward could not have been imagined.

Who were these men? I took the trouble to look up some of their names. There's Carlton Garlan of Stockton, Alabama; James L. McNair of Calhoun Falls, South Carolina; and William A. Klosterman of Rockville Center, New York. And Pablo G. Franco of Loving, New Mexico and John Marzotto of Weehawken, New Jersey. Scranton, Pennsylvnia gave Walter J. Skibinski and Chicago, Illinois sacrificed Albert Verbauen. I whisper the names in the dark room as I type this. For those moments that the letters materialize on the page in pronounceable patterns, I feel somehow this long-dead men are remembered. Like the scene in Saving Private Ryan where Ryan asks what the names were of the men who died looking for him, the mere intonation of each name (Caparzo, Wade) has resonance, meaning. Like Ryan, who repeats the names to himself, saying the names of the dead aloud is a way of remembering them.

With each name uttered I'm transported back to that black Christmas Eve 58 years ago. The lights twinkling in the windows across the street may have been how the harbor lights of Cherbourg may have looked through the mist that night in 1944. I see wreaths floating on the dark water — not Christmas wreaths, but funeral wreaths. Black circular holes in the water through which these young men disappeared as if down a coal chute into those cold English depths, the surface chopped by the hand of fate that night to the whipped green-white color of frozen spinach. It must have been much like the cold water of Long Island's Great South Bay that lays before me today as I contemplate the events of December 24, 1944. Somehow the common ocean connects this spot to that, across that other ocean, time. And that place is no hallowed "altar of victory" on which those boys were symbolically sacrificed. That night the sea was an unforgiving slab concealing a murderous vortex that stupidly robbed those GIs of their futures in pure "here one minute, gone the next" finality. And today it is in no uncertain terms a silent graveyard 180 feet below the Channel. A gash in the ocean through which the 66th passed to join the drowned and dead of the 1st, and the 4th, and the 29th, and others of dozens of units who had made the same crossing on a much warmer day in June, all without completing it. It's just that there are no white crosses or stars for these 800. Just darkness and murk.



So, on this Christmas Eve 2002, I will think about the last days of those 800 GIs, many of them teenagers, sons who would never have sons or daughters of their own. Perhaps there was a cure for cancer among them. Or a peace plan for a future conflict. Or a small instance of tenderness when it was needed, or the right words at the right time to a single person. I will think about their last vision of Christmas, spent perhaps in a chilly English drill hall with makeshift trees strung with garlands of silver gum wrappers, "ornaments" of balled-up cigarette packs, and crowning stars fashioned from flattened tin cans. And when the last order came, to " gear up and move out," perhaps they were really scared for the first time. They were heading to France, and into combat to reinforce the units being bloodied in the Battle of the Bulge.

Only they never made it. They died before they had the chance to die another day.

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[SAMWolf]

We went into one town in Belgium and the locals recognized him. The whole town just turned out and our money was no good.

That had to be an experience to remember. :-)

[Aeronaut]

Hi Sam.

[The Mayor]

Hi Sam..

Are you ready for Christmas?

[U S Army EOD]

One of the houses that we went to was where my father along with others carried the body of one of his best friends. His friend had been exposed in the hatch when a mortar round landed on the turret. The lady had washed the blood out of all of their clothes.

[Professional Engineer]

Most cool! I'd like to see the photo, if you're amenable to posting it some time.

[Professional Engineer]

Probably my favorite Spitfire painting.

[GailA]

Houses are..except the depth at which pipe lines are buried. We leave water running a lot during the winter months. If it is down in the low 20's by the time you factor in the wind..you better leave the water running or you will have frozen pipes.

I went out this morning what normally takes me 6 mins to get to Wal-Mart took 20 mins..at 15-20 miles an hour on ice packed roads.

[Samwise]

Starting a snowball fight?

Fresh out of spitballs, and Indiana has plenty of snow. :^)

[Brig_Gen_George_P_Harrison_CSA]

Date of rank, for Brigadier-General: February 7, 1865, with orders to report to Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee.

Source: A Roster of General Officers, Heads of Departments, Senators, Representatives, Military Organizations, etc., etc., in Confederate Service during the War between the States. By Charles C. Jones, Jr. Richmond, Southern Historical Society, 1876.

Harrison was recognized by his fellow Confederate veterans as having been promoted to Brigadier-General, as was reflected by his election to the post of Commanding General, United Confederate Veterans in 1917 and 1918. The biographical sketch from Confederate Military History written by Brig. Gen. Clement A. Evans, reflects this.

Thank you for your interest in the life of a noble Southern officer and gentleman!

[Brig_Gen_George_P_Harrison_CSA]

Thank you for your interest in the life of a noble Southern officer and gentleman!

[Professional Engineer]

The name caught my eye, and got me to thinking of the ex-Beatle.

The Foxhole is an awesome place to learn new stuff every day. Gen. Harrison is one for today. ;-)

[The Mayor]

Merry Christmas

From our House, to Yours!


Mrs Mayor painted this manger for the front of our house.

[Fiddlstix]

Click the Pics J

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[aomagrat]

Today's classic warship, USS Snark (SP-1291)

Motor patrol boat.

Displacement. not recorded
Length. 62' 4"
Beam. 11'
Draft. 1'
Speed. 20 kts.
Complement. 9
Armament. one 1-pounder

Snark, a 62-foot 4-inch long motor boat, was built at Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1917 for a civilian owner, with the probable intent to make her available to the Navy as a patrol craft. She was leased to the Navy soon after completion and placed in commission as USS Snark (SP-1291) at the end of August 1917. For the rest of World War I, and during the early post-war era, she served in the Fifth Naval District. Snark was returned to her owner in late March 1919.

Fate unknown.

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks for the link.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning Aeronaut.

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks alfa6.

[snippy_about_it]

Good afternoon EGC.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning Gail. It was 35 this morning and fog which seems to be pretty common here of late.