Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich Read Online Free PDF Page B

Eventually the sub ended up in Bermuda with its German crew being held as prisoners of war. By now, it was agreed that this sub had to “vanish” until after the war so that the Germans wouldn’t change their coding procedures. The Germans thought their Enigma code was so unbreakable, they transmitted all of their naval and in fact most of their other land and air orders and reports using it. What they obviously didn’t know was that our guys were reading these communications probably faster than the Germans themselves. This was a hell of a break for the good guys and no way in hell could the Jerries know we were on to them.
    So once in Bermuda, the sub was renamed, camouflaged and kept under heavy guard. The prisoners were taken to POW camps but in contravention of the Geneva Convention, they weren’t reported as survivors and they weren’t even allowed to write to their families to tell them they were alive and well. Tough toenails, right? We lost millions of tons of supplies and thousands of men thanks to those U Boat bastards so I didn’t give one daily shit about whether one crew’s whereabouts was kept secret. I guess the Brass didn’t either. War is hell.
    I love it when I get mail and I just got a letter from Harold.
    May 18, 1944
    Dear Frank,
    Hello, brother. I finally have some free time to bring you up to date though things are really hush, hush around here. I’m somewhere in England (you probably know more about it than I do! They don’t tell us beans about where we’re going or what we’ll be doing). All I know is I’ve marched and marched for weeks now and I’m sure that if all the miles I covered were put end to end, I’d have marched around this entire country by now. I’ve been target shooting, bayoneting and climbing every target in sight it seems. I’ve shot machine guns and pistols and I’ve “blown up” houses with anti-tank weapons and still no news of what all this work is for. We even practiced getting into and out of boats and one time, the boats we got into drove into a beach off of Wales. What a Chinese fire drill that was! Guys were falling all over the place but we were told to get this maneuver into our skulls since it was going to be gosh darn critical to us in the future. We walked through water in full battle dress and practiced running up the sand and crawling over the sand. This sure beats the Basic Training I started out with back in the States where we trained with WWI steel helmets and old weapons. Whatever all this training is for, it must be pretty big, though. I’ve heard some scuttlebutt that even Ike has shown up at some of the camps to get an eyeful of us Grunts.
    I used to get leave every once in a while and me and some pals would head to the local joints for some beers. We’d get razzed all the time by the local English soldiers who said we were, “over paid, overfed, over sexed and over here.” We’d give it right back though, and tell them that they were, “under paid, under fed, under sexed and under Eisenhower.” That got their goat and we’d end up bustin’ up the place some times. It seems I got all this energy and nowhere to use it up!
    I hope mom and pop are doing ok. With both of us gone, it’s gotta be rough. I send them almost everything I get so that should be some help. I miss being home with them. I miss listening to the shows I always liked hearing. What I wouldn’t give for a Philco right now! Fat chance of that happening. Oh but here’s some entertainment for you. While I was packing up, getting my gear together and making sure I had everything I’m going to need for however long I’m going to be fighting, I went by the airplane hangars and landing strips. You’ll never guess what I saw. A bunch of women standing on the wings of the airplanes with brooms they dipped into either white or black paint so they could slap the 3 white and 2 black stripes on our planes. I’m sure you know but that is the designation of all Allied