Friday, March 24, 1944. Pvt Theodore J. Miller, The Great Escape and the Ardeatine Massacre.

Nineteen year old Marine Corps Pvt. Theodore J. Miller who had become a famous face following being photographed being loaded back onto a landing craft after Eniewetok was killed on Ebon Atoll.

 

Today In Wyoming's History: March 24: 1944   76 Allied officers escaped Stalag Luft 3, which was later the topic of Paul Brickall's book "The Great Escape."

Seventy-six Royal Air Force POWs escaped from a single tunnel from Stalag Luft III in Silesia.  Seventy-three would be recaptured, almost all fairly rapidly.  Fifty of them were subsequently murdered after being recaptured.  

The Gestapo undertook an investigation of the escape and Commandant von Lindeiner-Wildau, who had started off as an assistant to Göring, was removed and threatened with court-martial.  He escaped prosecution by feigning mental illness.  He ended up in command of an infantry unit and was wounded in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.  He had, as commandant, followed the Geneva accords and did have the respect of the prisoners.  He died in 1963 at age 82.

An effort to bring the guilty to justice following the war was undertaken.  The man who selected the men to be killed, SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe, did not survive the war as he was ironically executed as one of the members of the July 20 plot.  Trials were held in 1947 and 1948, at which time the British government called off any future war crime prosecutions.

Stalag Luft III was a big camp and continued on after the event.  It's the camp featured in the recent series Masters of the Air, and it's the camp where a coworker's father had been a prisoner.  The murders of the POWs had a huge chilling effect on escapes, and attempts were much reduced after that.

The escape was massive, although it did not really tie up German resources in any significant way.  It also had the effect of provoking what had long been feared, although only temporarily, which was a Gestapo insertion into the POW system.  Air POWs were held by the Luftwaffe as a point of privilege. 

The event had an outsized lasting impact on the British. The movie based on Brickall's book (which is an excellent book) has become, oddly, a Christmas routine in the United Kingdom. 

The three men who successfully escaped were:

• Per Bergsland, Norwegian pilot of No. 332 Squadron RAF, the 44th escapee.  He remained a pilot after the war, eventually becoming a commercial pilot and an airline executive.
• Jens Müller, Norwegian pilot of No. 331 Squadron RAF, the 43d escapee.  He also remained a pilot and became an airline executive.  His escape took him to Sweden with Bergsland.
• Bram van der Stok, Dutch pilot of No. 41 Squadron RAF, the 18th escapee.  The most decorated pilot in Dutch history, he escaped through the Netherlands down the escape line through Spain and reentered combat before the end of the war.

It's of note that not one of the escapees who managed to get away were British.

It's also worth noting that the famous film fictionalized some elements for the audience.  Luft Stalag III was a massive camp and prior to the escape the Germans had separated American POWs, who had been mixed with the British, from the British.  There were no Americans in the escape at all.

Likewise, while the film correctly shows three men making good their escapes, two onto Sweden and one onto Spain, it condenses the timeline for the event and makes the Dutch pilot an Australian, and one of the Norwegian pilots a Pole.

In Italy, the Germans carried out the reprisal Ardeatine Massacre and killed 335 people in retaliation for a partisan attack in Rome the day prior.

The Germans surrounded the Jewish Greek town of Ioannina, which had been home to Greek Jews for 2,000 years, and marked the houses in the town by the religion of the home's occupants.

200 inmates of the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland were shot.

Mieczysław Wolski and Janusz Wysocki were shot for assisting Jews in Poland.

In Rome, Ivanoe Bonomi resigned as president of the Comitato Centrale di Liberazione Nazionale due to internal problems the organization had amongst its internal factions.  He would return to politics shortly, however.

The Germans prevailed in the Third Narva Offensive.

RAF Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade survived a fall of 18,000 feet without a parachute, his descent from his Lancaster arrested by pine trees and soft snow.  Alkemade had knowingly jumped out of his stricken aircraft without a parachute as his plane was on fire, and the parachute with it.

Fighting continued on Bougainville.

And also in the Admiralities.

R. Lee Ermey, who started his adult career in 1961 as a Marine, and who was medically discharged in 1972, was born in Emporia, Kansas.  He broke into movies while studying in the Philippines on the GI bill, with the role of the drill sergeant in The Boys In Company C, a film which was so close in plot to Full Metal Jacket, save for the fate of the DI, that the second film resulted in a lawsuit.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, March 23, 1944. Defeat at Cassino.

1940s, 1944, Bougainville, German SS, Italian partisans, Italy, Monte Cassino, National Guard, Operation Strangle, Partisans, Personalities, Rome, Vermont National Guard, World War Two

Thursday, March 23, 1944. Defeat at Cassino.

Offensive operations at Monte Cassino by the Allies were halted, and Allied troops withdrew to defensive lines.

In Rome, a bomb planted by Italian partisans killed 33 members of the SS.

In the skies above Italy, the Allies commenced Operation Strangle, an air offensive designed to cut German supplies to the Italian front.

A Japanese attack on Bougainville resulted in heavy Japanese losses.

The US bombarded the Japanese seaplane base on Elouae in the St. Matthias Islands.

Major General Leonard F. Wing, Commanding General, 43rd Division. South Pacific Area. 23 March, 1944.  Wing was unusual in that he was a division commander who was a Vermont National Guardsman, something Army prejudice generally prevented from occurring.  He was a lawyer in civilian life.  Wing is only 50 years old in this photograph.  He died just after World War Two at age 52, another senior figure whose life was seemingly cut short by the stress of command.

Richard Theodore Otcasek (March 23, 1944 – September 15, 2019), known as Ric Ocasek, was born in Baltimore.  He is best recalled as the vocalist for The Cars.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, March 22, 1944. German defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic.

1940s, 1944, Aircraft, Battle of the Atlantic, Bougainville, Clothing, Geology, German Kriegsmarine, Italian Army, Monte Cassino, New Zealand Army, Rationing, The Holocaust, Theresienstadt, World War Two

Sunday, March 23, 1924. Noise.

 

"The Curse of Noise" Hearst's New York American.  March 23, 1924.

Speaking of noise, Mussolini led a fascist march and gave a campaign speech at the end of it, on this day in 1924.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, March 20, 1924. Barbarity Codified.

Monday, March 20, 1944. Landings, port stops, potential halts.

U.S. Marines landed unopposed on Emirau in the last stage of Operation Cartwheel in the Bismarks. 

The Battle of Sangshak began in Minipur on the Burmese frontier with India.

African American crew members of the USS Mason, March 20, 1944. Boston.

The Red Army took Vinnytsia and Mohyliv-Podilskyi.  Vinnytsia had been the site of Hitler's headquarters in Ukraine.

Gen. Alexander agrees to call off attacks at Monte Cassino if progress is not made within the next two days.

The Rita Hayworth film Cover Girl was released.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, March 19, 1944. Germany invades Hungary.

Saturday, March 18, 1944. Summoned to Germany.

VI Corps cleark working near entrance to cave which has been filled by explosion from German shell, March 18, 1944.

The Soviets, reacting to their recent defeat, began the Third Narva Offensive.

They also, on the same day, took Zhmerynka.

The Germans began a two-day massacre of prisoners, mostly being Soviet citizens and anti-fascists in the Romanian city of Rîbnița.

Miklós Horthy went to Schloss Klessheim, south of Salzburg, at Hitler's invitation. It was not a pleasant meeting.  Horthy was forced to accept a new government and allow German troops onto Hungarian soil, which amounted to an effective German invasion.

German allies were abandoning Germany as quickly as possible, remaining in its orbit, at this point, by force.

The German 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division Hermann Göring bombed the villages of Monchio, Susano and Costrignano, around Montefiorino, and slaughtered their entire population.

Aimo Allan Koivunen became the first documented case of a soldier overdosing on methamphetamine during combat.  The Finnish solider retreated singly after his ski patrol was attacked and surrounded by Soviet troops.  He was carrying the unit's entire supply of Pervitin, a methamphetamine used to keep troops awake on duty, and entered a state of delirium and became unconscious.  He came into Finnish lines days later with a still retained massively elevated heart beat and weighing under 100 lobs.  He'd skied nearly 250 miles during the ordeal.\

He died in 1989 at the age of 71.

World War One French general, and opponent of Vichy, Noël Édouard, vicomte de Curières de Castelnau, died at age 92.

Last prior edition:

Friday, March 17, 1944. Forces of nature.

Monday, March 13, 1944. Bougainville counterattack.

US troops regained most of the ground lost on Bougainville in a counterattack.

37th Infantry Division soldier firing Thompson submachinegun on Bougainville, March 13, 1944.

Light tank in action, Bougainville.

Artillery in action, Bougainville.

U.S. forces overrun the small Japanese garrison at Hauwei.

In northwest Indian, the 17th and 20th Indian Divisions were authorized to pull back to Imphal. Mountbatten requested American aircraft to supply the Chinese and to redeploy the 5th Indian Division from the Arakan.  

Japanese aircraft attacked the Broadway airfield being used to supply the Chindits.

The Kingdom of Italy and the Soviet Union restored diplomatic relations with each other.

The Red Army took Kherson.

The U-575 was sunk in the Atlantic.  The Japanese cruiser Tatsuta was sunk off Hachijō-jima by the American submarine Sand Lance.

Last Prior:

Sunday, March 12, 1944. Derailed.

Sunday, March 12, 1944. Derailed.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 12: 1944  Nineteen cars of a Union Pacific train derailed near the location of old Ft.Steele.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

A few photos of Ft. Steele (more are on the linked in site.

Ft. Fred Steele, Carbon County Wyoming

In the past, I haven't tended to post fort entries here, but for net related technical reasons, I'm going to, even though these arguably belong on one of my other blogs.  I'll probably cross link this thread in.

These are photographs of Ft. Fred Steele, a location that I've sometimes thought is the bleakest historical site in Wyoming.

One of the few remaining structures at Ft. Steele, the powder magazine.  It no doubt is still there as it is a stone structure.

The reason that the post was built, the Union Pacific, is still there.

Ft. Steele is what I'd regard as fitting into the Fourth Generation of Wyoming frontier forts, although I've never seen it described that way, or anyone other than me use that term.   By my way of defining them, the First Generation are those very early, pre Civil War, frontier post that very much predated the railroads, such as Ft. Laramie.  The Second Generation would be those established during the Civil War in an effort to protect the trail and telegraph system during that period during which the Regular Army was largely withdrawn from the Frontier and state units took over. The Third Generation would be those posts like Ft. Phil Kearney that were built immediately after the Civil War for the same purpose.  Contemporaneously with those were posts like Ft. Steele that were built to protect the Union Pacific Railroad.  As they were in rail contact with the rest of the United States they can't really be compared to posts like Ft. Phil Kearney, Ft. C. F. Smith or Ft. Caspar, as they were built for a different purpose and much less remote by their nature.

Ft. Sanders, after it was abandoned, remained a significant railhead and therefore the area became the center of a huge sheep industry. Quite a few markers at the post commemorate the ranching history of the area, rather than the military history.

One of the current denizens of the post.

Suttlers store, from a distance.

Union Pacific Bridge Tenders House at the post.

Current Union Pacific bridge.

Some structure from the post, but I don't know what it is.

The main part of the post's grounds.

This 1914 vintage highway marker was on the old Lincoln Highway, which apparently ran north of the tracks rather than considerably south of them, like the current Interstate Highway does today.

The Marine Corps occupied Wotje Atoll in the Marshalls without opposition.  A small U.S. force landed on Hauwei in the Admiralty Islands but did meet opposition.

The Red Army reached the Bug at Gayvoron.

Pope Pius XII asked the belligerent parties in World War Two to spare Rome.

Hitler authorized Operation Margarethe, the German occupation of its ally Hungary, in order to prevent it from concluding a separate peace with the Soviet Union, which it was secretly attempting to do.

Romolo Murri, controversial former Italian Priest and politician, and founder of the political party that would become the precursor to the Italian Christian Democracy Party, died.

Italian journalist and anti-fascist partisan Silvio Trentin died as well.

The Duke School of Medicine’s all-white intramural basketball team secretly played North Carolina College for Negroes’ all-black team.  North Carolina won the game.