343rd Engineer General Service Regiment

[Walt's Daughter]

The latest. Correspondence between Tony Honeyman and John and Glenna:

 

==============

 

Monday 24th May 2009

Monroe,WA

 

Good morning gentlemen (or rather good evening Tony in the UK),

 

My name is John Bishop and although I live in the UK, my wife (Glenna) is from Washington State and we are currently visiting the USA.

Glenna has always provided me with stories of her fathers exploits in WW2.

 

Yesterday we searched the attic and located a daily journal that he kept throughout his time in the 343rd Engineering regiment from April 1942 to his discharge in the spring of 1945.

 

The daily journal provides location (in general terms due to military protocol), colleagues and characters, movies and books, pay dates and amounts, work details, etc., and follows his journey from Camp Claiborne, via New Jersey. to the UK (via Halifax and Glasgow) and his arrival at Nettlebed on 16th July 1942. (By coincidence he drew a sketch of the small stone castle which was constructed at the entrance to the camp in the rear of his journal - and your web site provided me with the opportunity to verify the accuracy of his sketch.) He traveled to North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Southern France and eventually into the Rhineland before returning to the USA via Brussels (a three day pass) and being discharged as part of the 328 Engineer Battalion.

 

The complete journal is in our possession and provides a fascinating and probably accurate insight into daily life during his travels.

At this stage I have no idea if one or other of you might be interested in the contents etc.,

 

Terry, I will be back in the UK by 2nd June and happy to chat over the phone, if you are still interested.

 

Best wishes and thanks for the opportunity to verify the accuracy of Roy's journal from the entries on your website.

 

Very sincerely

John

 

 

-------------------

 

Dear John and Glenna

 

Thanks for the interesting email - the short answer is yes, I would love to learn more about the 343rd and in particular their time in Nettlebed. The journal sounds really interesting and just the sort of thing that can provide detail that is missing elsewhere.

 

How about meeting up some time? I live in Oxfordshire, not too far from Nettlebed and could show you the site. I've put some photos and also a map which shows the locations of the two Nettlebed camps (North and South) on my Flickr site here:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23690313@N04/page6/

 

My home phone number is (removed for privacy) but unfortunately I am traveling to the US tomorrow until Friday. Well unfortunately meaning I won't be there if you phone!! I've also sent you my other email address which I check daily - I tend to use this one for web boards etc in case I get a spam attack and don't check it all the time.

 

Again thanks for getting in contact.

 

Best wishes

Tony