If you haven't watched this episode of The Outer Limits (the 1990's version), then you are missing out on a great Holocaust based story. It's riveting and I've seen it twice already.

Sam Egan, the writer of the award-winning 100th show of the series, "Tribunal", based the story of the episode on his father's experience in Auschwitz during World War II where his first wife and their young daughter were murdered by the Nazis.

Here's the link

Honoring World War II Foot soldiers

By Arthur Hirsch, The Baltimore Sun

5:00 a.m. EST, January 13, 2014

Thanks to Gina Lukens (Facebook) for sharing this with me.

Here's an excerpt - read the rest via the above link:

During a forced march from Belgium to southern Germany in the closing months of fighting in Europe in World War II , U.S. Army prisoner of war Cpl. Michael Romanelli said he thought often of getting home — to any sort of life he could make. Romanelli, now 91, recalled thinking "I'll be happy to go home and dig ditches for the rest of my life."

From a new friend - more on its way...

We have a total of three boxes about WWII in my garage I stumbled upon this summer containing records, personal stories of the men from 386th Regiment 97th division reunions. Rowland Bergstrom was a Clerk with Company M in the 386th Regiment 97th Division.

 

I have included a PDF of the Unit Journal and a photo of Lewis Conklin who's story is told in this journal. (Probably last picture ever taken of him)

 

I live in fear that our house will catch fire some day and these records would be lost.

Feel free to share with anyone interested. Many of these division's crossed paths during the war, but frankly really interseting reading... Like a novel..

 

Lewis picture inspired me to start scanning (when I flipped it over and read what was writen on the back).

 

Morning Reports 97 Mech Troop From: 250001 T0: 290400

Place: Rossbach, Czech

1500 Troop train and 1 Plat light tanks arrived at C.P. Received message from 3rd Platoon that they had been fired upon and requested an ambulance.

1630 CPL Conklin killed by enemy action, PFC Harris wounded and Pvt Burdy (Spelling) missing. Discontinue patrol against the enemy in the vicinity of Thonburnn, Czechoslovakia.

1730 26 EM and 1 Officer attached to troop – assault Plat 1930 3 EM and 1 Officer - Artillery observers.

 

From: 260001 To: 262400 Place: Rossbach, Czechoslovakia

0645 LT Walther and T/5 Noyes, T/5 Silver carried litter with CPL Conklin’s body out of woods where he was killed, they were supported by 6 EM with mortar and MG fire and small arms. ******************* BACK STORY ******************************

*********************************************

 

Corporal Lewis W. Conklin, on 25 April 1945, near Thonbrunn, Czechoslovakia, Corporal Conklin volunteered to guide a patrol being sent to rescue a wounded man from an area known to be under heavy enemy small arms and rocket fire from concealed positions. As the patrol approached the point where the casualty lay, Corporal Conklin observed an enemy soldier approaching but soon lost contact because of the heavily wooded terrain. In order to locate the enemy position, Corporal Conklin fearlessly and courageously exposed himself to enemy fire and was fired upon and killed after he located the enemy position and endeavored to point it out to his patrol leader.

Attached Files

  97th Cavalry Reconnaissance - Lewis Conklin - sm image.jpg (Size: 143.82 KB / Downloads: 1)

Marion,

Happy New Year. Hope all is well for you. The New Year is starting off very good for me and I wanted to pass the news on to you.

As I mentioned before, back in September 2012, Arcadia Publishing contacted me to do a book on Beale AFB for their Images of America series. I agreed to do the project and the book will be released on 20 January 2014.

The title is "Images of America: Beale Air Force Base During the Cold War" and contains a lot of rare photographs (some never released to the public) of operations at Beale AFB when it was under Strategic Air Command (SAC).

This is the link to Amazon if you want to see what the book looks like:

http://www.amazon.com/Beale-During-Images-America-Series/dp/1467130818/ref=pd_ybh_1

The Amazon site actually allows you to look at the introduction and the first two chapters. You may find the first chapter of interest to you. It covers the Engineer Aviation Brigades that were assigned to Camp Beale to start the construction work that lead to Beale AFB.

If you are interested in purchasing, then I recommend pre-ordering through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, etc. as the pre-order books are selling at 15-26% discounted prices over retail ($21.99). Those discounts are good until the release date above.

Note: This is not the WWII history of Camp Beale I have been working on for the last 6-7 years.

I hope your New Year is a good one. Take Care,

James

This got great reviews from some of my Facebook friends

Crossing the Rapido: A Tragedy of World War II

by Duane Schultz