Friday, June 30, 2023

Saturday, June 30, 1923. Bombing the Hochfeld Bridge.

A bomb detonated on the Hochfeld railway bridge in the German city of Duisburg, Westphalia while a Belgian troop train was crossing the bridge, killing eight Belgian soldiers and two German civilians.  Forty three others were injured.  The bomb was in a toilet of the train itself.


The mayor of Hochfeld and twelve others were arrested as suspects.

A new bridge would be built nearby, using parts of the old bridge structure, being completed in 1927.  It was rendered inoperable on May 22, 1944, by an Allied aerial bomb.  The Germans in turn would blow the bridge again on May 4, 1945, but the American Army built a temporary structure to repair it on May 8, 1945, which was dubbed the "Victory Bridge".

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A new bridge span was completed in 1949.  It still uses parts of the original structure.

The Country Gentleman had an illustration of a Civil War veteran Zouave cleaning his Civil War era rifle, a bittersweet illustration as the war was now some sixty years in the past and Civil War veterans were disappearing daily.


The Saturday Evening Post featured a Leyendecker of a corpulent British soldier saluting a child patriot.

Sometimes the news from a century ago reads an awful lot like today's.


Harding was in Gardiner, Montana and Yellowstone National Park on his Voyage of Understanding.

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