Scattershots - 5sep19

Trip report.  We’re now on the Rhine heading for Koblenz to view some historical fortifications.  On this trip we landed in Munich, and drove to Bad Worishofen for a big reunion with four German families we have known and visited for decades, and ate ourselves silly at different places in the foothills of the Alps.  Very interesting was that no one wanted to talk politics very much - a staple of German conversation.  Then we drove to Basel through Austria and Switzerland to catch our Viking river longship.  The trip down the Rhine has been wonderful, especially the tour of the actual battlegrounds of the little known Colmar salient (contemporaneously fought with the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign made famous by Audie Murphy).  The daylong walking tour of Strasbourg was almost a reminder of the march up the Bataan peninsula.  We’re again traveling with friends with whom we done this before.  So far we’ve been through four countries and will add Holland before coming home.

Comments

[Steven Frisch]

My fathers uncle was in the 44th Infantry Division. I remember talking to him as a kid about his experience. His unit was mostly kids from New York but he was in an Illinois National Guard unit that got attached. He said he figured that since his unit was landing in France so long after D-Day they thought they would have a relatively easy time of it. Instead they were in the Vosges campaign, Colmar, and then into Bavaria and eventually Austria before the end of the war.

[Walt]

Safe travels my friend. That's some beautiful countryside.
I traveled that rout by train when I was younger.

[Russ]

Looking forward to your first-person observations of the economic stability of visited countries: # boarded-up storefronts, unrepaired potholes, clean streets, condition of public transit, etc.

[Robert Cross]

Very interesting was that no one wanted to talk politics very much - a staple of German conversation. --

Do you think this was because they don't like trump and didn't want to be rude?

[Barry Pruett]

Steve. My grandfather (from Blue Island) was in the 103rd Infantry. Southern France to Germany and then down to Austria as well. A couple years ago we did ancestry.com, and we discovered that I have a half-aunt in Innsbruck, Austria. While trying to determine who her father was, my daughter Maggie found a recently declassified log for the 103rd online. I would bet that the log for the 44th was recently declassified as well. It was amazing to see all of the orders and exactly where my grandfather was almost to the second during his time in Europe. I hope you can find it.